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1. Foreword
2. Introduction
3. The Mechanics of and Some Problems of the Presentation
4. Africa
1. Geographical Presentation of Africa
2. Africa: Beginning to 8000 B.C.
3. Africa: 8000 to 5000 B.C.
4. Africa: 5000 to 3000 B.C.
5. Africa: 3000 to 1500 B.C.
6. Africa: 1500 to 1000 B.C.
7. Africa: 1000 to 700 B.C.
8. Africa: 700 to 601 B.C.
9. Africa: 600 to 501 B.C.
10. Africa: 500 to 401 B.C.
11. Africa: 400 to 301 B.C.
12. Africa: 300 to 201 B.C.
13. Africa: 200 to 101 B.C.
14. Africa: 100 B.C. to 0
15. Africa: 0 to A.D. 100
16. Africa: A.D. 101 to 200
17. Africa: A.D. 201 to 300
18. Africa: A.D. 301 to 400
19. Africa: A.D. 401 to 500
20. Africa: A.D. 501 to 600
21. Africa: A.D. 601 to 700
22. Africa: A.D. 701 to 800
23. Africa: A.D. 801 to 900
24. Africa: A.D. 901 to 1000
25. Africa: A.D. 1001 to 1100
26. Africa: A.D. 1101 to 1200
27. Africa: A.D. 1201 to 1300

28. Africa: A.D. 1301 to 1400

29. Africa: A.D. 1401 to 1500

30. Africa: A.D. 1501 to 1600

31. Africa: A.D. 1601 to 1700

32. Africa: A.D. 1701 to 1800

33. Africa: A.D. 1801 to 1900
5. America

1. Geographical Presentation of America

2. America: Beginning to 8000 B.C.

3. America: 8000 to 5000 B.C.

4. America: 5000 to 3000 B.C.

5. America: 3000 to 1500 B.C.

6. America: 1500 to 1000 B.C.

7. America: 1000 to 700 B.C.

8. America: 700 to 601 B.C.

9. America: 600 to 501 B.C.
10. America: 500 to 401 B.C.
11. America: 400 to 301 B.C.
12. America: 300 to 201 B.C.
13. America: 200 to 101 B.C.
14. America: 100 B.C. to 0
15. America: 0 to 100 A.D.

16. America: A.D. 101 to 200
17. America: A.D. 201 to 300
18. America: A.D. 301 to 400
19. America: A.D. 401 to 500
20. America: A.D. 501 to 600
21. America: A.D. 601 to 700
22. America: A.D. 701 to 800
23. America: A.D. 801 to 900
24. America: A.D. 901 to 1000
25. America: A.D. 1001 to 1100

26. America: A.D. 1101 to 1200

27. America: A.D. 1201 to 1300

28. America: A.D. 1301 to 1400

29. America: A.D. 1401 to 1500

30. America: A.D. 1501 to 1600

31. America: A.D. 1601 to 1700

32. America: A.D. 1701 to 1800

33. America: A.D. 1801 to 1900

6. Central and Northern Asia

1. Geographical Presentation of Central and Northem Asia
2. Central and Northern Asia: Beginning to 8000 B.C.
3. Central and Northern Asia: 8000 to 5000 B.C.
4. Central and Northern Asia: 5000 to 3000 B.C.
5. Central and Northern Asia: 3000 to 1500 B.C.
6. Central and Northern Asia: 1500 to 1000 B.C.
7. Central and Northern Asia: 1000 to 700 B.C.
8. Central and Northern Asia: 700 to 601 B.C.
9. Central and Northern Asia: 600 to 501 B.C.

10. Central and Northern Asia: 500 to 401 B.C.

11. Central and Northern Asia: 400 to 301 B.C.

12. Central and Northern Asia: 300 to 201 B.C.

13. Central and Northern Asia: 200 to 101 B.C.

14. Central and Northern Asia: 100 B.C. to 0

15. Central and Northern Asia: 0 to A.D. 100

16. Central and Northern Asia: A.D. 101 to 200

17. Central and Northern Asia: A.D. 201 to 300

18. Central and Northern Asia: A.D. 301 to 400

19. Central and Northern Asia: A.D. 401 to 500

20. Central and Northern Asia: A.D. 501 to 600

21. Central and Northern Asia: A.D. 601 to 700

22. Central and Northern Asia: A.D. 701 to 800

23. Central and Northern Asia: A.D. 801 to 900

24.
20%
26.

28.
29.
30.
Sl.
32)
33.

Central and Northern Asia:
Central and Northern Asia:
Central and Northern Asia:
. Central and Northern Asia:
Central and Northern Asia:
Central and Northern Asia:
Central and Northern Asia:
Central and Northern Asia:
Central and Northern Asia:
Central and Northern Asia:

7. Europe

Europe

. Europe: 1500 to 1000 B.C.

. Europe: 1000 to 700 B.C.
. Europe: 700 to 601 B.C.
. Europe: 600 to 501 B.C.
. Europe: 500 to 401 B.C.
. Europe: 400 to 301 B.C.
. Europe: 300 to 201 B.C.
. Europe: 200 to 101 B.C.
. Europe: 100 B.C. to 0
. Europe: 0 to A.D. 100
. Europe: A.D. 101 to 200
. Europe: A.D. 201 to 300
. Europe: A.D. 301 to 400
. Europe: A.D. 401 to 500
. Europe: A.D. 501 to 600

. Europe: A.D. 601 to 700

A.
A.D.
A.D.
A.D.
A.D,
A.D.
A.D.
A.D.
A.D.
AT.

901 to 1000

1001 to 1100
1101 to 1200
1201 to 1300
1301 to 1400
1401 to 1500
1501 to 1600
1601 to 1700
1701 to 1800
1801 to 1900

. Geographical Presentation of Europe
. Europe: Beginning to 8000 B.C.
. Europe: 8000 to 5000 B.C.
. Europe: 5000 to 3000 B.C.

: 3000 to 1500 B.C.

22. Europe: A.D. 701 to 800
23. Europe: A.D. 801 to 900
24. Europe: A.D. 901 to 1000
25. Europe: A.D. 1001 to 1100
26. Europe: A.D. 1101 to 1200
27. Europe: A.D. 1201 to 1300
28. Europe: A.D. 1301 to 1400
29. Europe: A.D. 1401 to 1500
30. Europe: A.D. 1501 to 1600
31. Europe: A.D. 1601 to 1700
32. Europe: A.D. 1701 to 1800
33. Europe: A.D. 1801 to 1900
8. The Indian Subcontinent

1. Geographical Presentation of The Indian Subcontinent

2. The Indian Subcontinent: Beginning to 8,000 B.C.

3. The Indian Subcontinent: 8000 to 5000 B.C.

4. The Indian Subcontinent: 5000 to 3000 B.C.

5. The Indian Subcontinent: 3000 to 1500 B.C.

6. The Indian Subcontinent: 1500 to 1000 B.C.

7. The Indian Subcontinent: 1000 to 700 B.C.

8. The Indian Subcontinent: 700 to 601 B.C.

9. The Indian Subcontinent: 600 to 501 B.C.
10. The Indian Subcontinent: 500 to 401 B.C.
11. The Indian Subcontinent: 400 to 301 B.C.
12. The Indian Subcontinent: 300 to 201 B.C.
13. The Indian Subcontinent: 200 to 101 B.C.
14. The Indian Subcontinent: 100 B.C. to 0
15. The Indian Subcontinent: 0 to A.D. 100
16. The Indian Subcontinent: 101 A.D. to 200
17. The Indian Subcontinent: A.D. 201 to 300
18. The Indian Subcontinent: A.D. 301 to 400
19. The Indian Subcontinent: A.D. 401 to 500

20.
. The Indian Subcontinent
. The Indian Subcontinent
23:
24.
25.
26.
a7.
28.
29.
30.
31.
32.
33.

21
22

The Indian Subcontinent

The Indian Subcontinent
The Indian Subcontinent
The Indian Subcontinent
The Indian Subcontinent
The Indian Subcontinent
The Indian Subcontinent
The Indian Subcontinent
The Indian Subcontinent
The Indian Subcontinent
The Indian Subcontinent
The Indian Subcontinent

9. The Far East

. The Far East:
. The Far East:
. The Far East:
. The Far East:
. The Far East:
. The Far East:
. The Far East:
. The Far East:
. The Far East:
. The Far East:
. The Far East:
. The Far East:
. The Far East:
. The Far East:
. The Far East:

: A.D.
: A.D.
: A.D.
: A.D.
: A.D.
: A.D.
: A.D.
: A.D.
: A.D.
: A.D.
: A.D.
: A.D.
: A.D.
: A.D.

901 to 600
601 to 700
701 to 800
801 to 900
901 to 1000
1001 to 1100
1101 to 1200
1201 to 1300
1301 to 1400
1401 to 1500
1501 to 1600
1601 to 1700
1701 to 1800
1801 to 1900

. Geographical Presentation of The Far East
. The Far East:

Beginning to 8000 B.C.

700 to 601
600 to 501
900 to 401
400 to 301
300 to 201
200 to 101

B.G.
[saer
Bas
B.C.
Bit
Bs.

100 B.C. to 0
0 to A.D. 100
A.D. 101 to 200
A.D. 201 to 300

8000 to 5000 B.C.
9000 to 3000 B.C.
3000 to 1500 B.C.
1500 to 1000 B.C.
1000 to 700 B.C.

The Far East:
19. The Far East:
20. The Far East:
21. The Far East:
22. The Far East:
23. The Far East:
24. The Far East:
25. The Far East:
26. The Far East:
27. The Far East:
28. The Far East:
29. The Far East:
30. The Far East:
31. The Far East:
32. The Far East:
33. The Far East:

10. The Near East

1. Geographical Presentation of The Near East
. The Near East: Beginning to 8000 B.C.

. The Near East: 8000 to 5000 B.C.

. The Near East: 5000 to 3000 B.C.

3000 to 1500 B.C.

1500 to 1000 B.C.

1000 to 700 B.C.

18. a0.
A.D.
Pel),
A.D.
A.D.
A.D.
A.D.
AD,
A.D.
A.D.
A.D.
AL,
A.D.
FD,
A.D.
A.D.

301 to 400
401 to 500
901 to 600
601 to 700
701 to 800
801 to 900
901 to 1000
1001 to 1100
1101 to 1200
1201 to 1300
1301 to 1400
1401 to 1500
1501 to 1600
1601 to 1700
1701 to 1800
1801 to 1900

. The Near East:
. The Near East:

2
3
4
5. The Near East:
6
7
8

. The Near East:
. The Near East:
. The Near East:
. The Near East:
. The Near East:
. The Near East:
. The Near East:
. [The Near East

700 to 601 B.C.
600 to 501 B.C.
900 to 401 B.C.
400 to 301 B.C.
300 to 201 B.C.
200 to 101 B.C.
100 B.C. to 0

0 to A.D. 100

The Near East: A.D.
The Near East: A.D.
The Near East: A.D.
The Near East: A.D.
The Near East: A.D.
The Near East: A.D.
The Near East: A.D.
The Near East: A.D.
The Near East: A.D.
The Near East: A.D.
The Near East: A.D.
The Near East: A.D.
The Near East: A.D.
The Near East: A.D.
The Near East: A.D.
The Near East: A.D.
32. The Near East: A.D.
33. The Near East: A.D.
11. The Pacific
1. Geographical Presentation of The Pacific
. The Pacific: Beginning to 8000 B.C.
. The Pacific: 8000 to 5000 B.C.
. The Pacific: 5000 to 3000 B.C.
. The Pacific: 3000 to 1500 B.C.
. The Pacific: 1500 to 1000 B.C.
. The Pacific: 1000 to 700 B.C.

16.
17,
18.
19.
20.
21.
22:
23.
24.
20.
26.
27.
28.
29.
30.
31.

101 to 200
201 to 300
301 to 400
401 to 500
901 to 600
601 to 700
701 to 800
801 to 900
901 to 1000
1001 to 1100
1101 to 1200
1201 to 1300
1301 to 1400
1401 to 1500
1501 to 1600
1601 to 1700
1701 to 1800
1801 to 1900

. The Pacific:
. The Pacific:
. The Pacific:
. The Pacific:
. The Pacific:
. The Pacific:

700 to 601 B.C.
600 to 501 B.C.
900 to 401 B.C.
400 to 301 B.C.
300 to 201 B.C.
200 to 101 B.C.

12,
13.

14.
15:
16.

18.
19.
20.
21.
22.
23.
24.
Zo,
26.
2/.
28.
29.
30.
31.
BZ:
33.

The Pacific:
The Pacific:
The Pacific:
. The Pacific:
The Pacific:
The Pacific:
The Pacific:
The Pacific:
The Pacific:
The Pacific:
The Pacific:
The Pacific:
The Pacific:
The Pacific:
The Pacific:
The Pacific:
The Pacific:
The Pacific:
The Pacific:
The Pacific:
Special Sections

Bibliography

100 B.C. to 0
0 to A.D. 100

A.D.
A.D.
A.D.
A.D.
A.D.
md.
Pai,
A.D.
A.D.
A.D.
comes
A.D.
A.D.
A.D.
A.D.
A.D.
A.D.
AD.

Foreword
The Foreword to Jack Eldred Maxfield's A Comprehensive Outline of
World History.

“A Comprehensive Outline of World History” was written and self-
published by Dr. Jack E. Maxfield.

The structure of the work is innovative. Each chapter covers a period of
historical time (e.g. a century). Sections within chapters describe what was
going on in every geographical region of the world; each section provides a
reference for that region in the subsequent chapter, i.e. in the next time
period. The reader can thus get a snapshot of the entire world at a point in
time by reading one chapter, or can follow the history of a region through
time by linking to sections in successive chapters.

This modular, linked structure is ideally suited to web-based online
implementation, especially to the Connexions platform. I am pleased to
make this content available on Connexions for the enjoyment and
enlightenment of everyone with an interest in the history of our world.

Robert Maxfield
October 2008

More Details on the Origin of this Material

My father, Dr. Jack Eldred Maxfield, was an orthopedic surgeon with a
deep interest in history. He self-published three editions of “A
Comprehensive Outline of World History.” The 1959 first edition consisted
of 200 pages with 8 references in the bibliography, and included a unique
time-line, hand-drawn and hand-colored by him, showing the rise and fall
of civilizations. An original and six carbon copies were typed from his
hand-written manuscript. He put these copies into binders and presented
them to me and my friends as high-school graduation gifts.

The second, hardbound edition, published about 1975, was a single volume
of 474 pages, 47 bibliographical references, and numerous hand-drawn,
hand-colored maps. I do not know how many copies were printed.

The third edition, typed by my father on an electronic typewriter and
published in 1984, consisted of three hardbound volumes totaling 1303
pages and 322 bibliographic references. Well over one hundred copies, in
batches of 20, were eventually published as demand grew. The following
letter was included with each set he gave away:

Dear friends:

These three volumes are in no way to be considered a formal
publication. They simply represent the end result of some 25
years of reading, writing and re-writing historical material
arranged in a chronological way to suit my own fancy and for the
use of my family if they so desired. I am happy now to include a
few friends who have expressed an interest.

Before using this manuscript for reference or even for casual
reading, I would suggest that you first peruse the pages numbered
with Roman numerals in Volume I. They give the general plan of
the outline and suggest its purposes as well as defining some of
its limitations. Please excuse any remaining typographical and/or
spelling errors and I am sure there are many.

Best regards,
Jack E. Maxfield

Jack Maxfield died on September 14, 2006, at age 93. The original 1984
typed manuscript of “A Comprehensive Outline of World History” was
found on a shelf in his closet. In 2007, a special print edition was published
for his grandchildren, future generations of our family, and for special
friends. Thanks to the World Wide Web and Connexions it is now available
to everyone.

Introduction
Back to The Foreword

My friends ask why I should undertake to write a World History. Aren't
there already enough such books in the English language? Of course. There
are dozens, perhaps scores of them, each with a particular purpose, or
scope, or bias and each with some limitations. The very excellent The
Outline of History by H.G. Wells was published some sixty plus years ago
and lacks much of the information gained from recent archeology and other
sciences. It devotes only about two pages to the Aztec and Inca empires and
only an occasional sentence about Central and South America, otherwise.
Sub-Saharan Africa is scarcely mentioned except in regard to the slave
trade. The Durants' multi-volume work, The Story of Civilization is a
beautifully written narrative which, however, gets bogged down in its later
volumes with tiring details of long ago politics, royal genealogies and
religious and philosophical dialogues. Unfortunately, as with other texts, it
also has some inaccuracies. The more scholarly A Study of History is a
somewhat mystical interpretation of Amold Toynbee's personal ideas of
history, not in any sense a chronological narration of happenings. If the
reader is not already well versed in the essential landmarks of the world's
factual history, understanding is of ten difficult. The same might be said of
the more recent Hugh Thomas' A History of the World, which has no
suggestion of continuity from the standpoint of dates, but discusses one
facet of man's endeavors at a time, jumping freely from 1,000 B.C. to A.D.
1,800 and back again, assuming that the reader already knows the prosaic
historical f acts to appreciate these rapid changes of scenes. Again,
inaccuracies are present, some of which are mentioned later in the text.
While the usual high school history books have been cut of most of the
gore, tragedy and even obscenities of the old world, some of the college and
adult texts such as The Columbia History of the World and William
McNeill's several texts are excellent, but they still do not reach the far
comers of the earth in some of the centuries. The An Encyclopedia of
World History, compiled and edited by William L. Langer, is an excellent
documentation of world history - ancient, medieval and modern,
chronologically arranged and this has been referred to many times during
the writing of this manuscript, particularly for confirmation of dates,

dynasties, clarification of names, etc. It is not a book for leisurely reading
and enjoyment, however, and is essentially a list of year dates with short,
concise material after each, purely for reference. Similar, but less useful, is
James Trager's very recent The Peoples Chronology, a series of
completely unrelated and miscellaneous "facts" (Some are gross errors)
listed by years. It is difficult to see the value of this except perhaps as a
parlor game of "What things happened in the world at large in some specific
year?" This manuscript has one purpose only - to give a panoramic picture
of the entire globe from the arctic to deepest Africa and the south Pacific in
specific time-frames. The emphasis is to give the overall view of the world
and its peoples, without dwelling in too much depth on those features that
are easily available in every school and municipal library and in many
homes. I refer to such subjects as the details of classical Greece and Rome,
the American Colonies and the various wars and specific battles. For
example, in this text less space may be given the American Revolutionary
and Civil wars than the pre-Inca civilizations of South America or the life
of the Mongol soldiers in central Asia. Information on the former subjects is
available everywhere, while that on the latter two subjects is limited.
Forward to:

. The Mechanics of and Some Problems of the Presentation
. Introduction to the Method of Geographical Presentation
. Intro to Era

Africa

. America

. Central and Northern Asia

. Europe

. The Far East

. The Indian Subcontinent

. The Near East

11. Pacific

. Some Thoughts

. Special Sections

. Bibliography

—_—
SOMNDUARWNE

PRR
BR WN

The Mechanics of and Some Problems of the Presentation

Material is arranged in one sense chronologically and in another sense
geographically so that the reader may review historical situations either in a
"satellite" cross-sectional view of the entire world in one time-frame, or
may follow events in any one geographical area through the many centuries
in more or less brief narrative form by following the simple (Continued on
page so and so) after each section. An attempt has been made to give a brief
resume of the political status, important philosophies, scientific
developments and religious trends while devoting proportionately more
time to a description of the status of the common people of an area at any
given moment. Hopefully most of the world's outstanding personalities in
all fields have been given some space, but it is admitted that many aspects
of art, literature, music and architecture may, in some opinions, be slighted,
as these are not the major fields of the author's interests.

The textual data is presented in multiple chapters, each representing a
definite period of time. The earlier chapters span several millennia each, but
beginning with the 7th century B.C. each chapter contains the events of one
century only. Within each chapter or time-frame in addition to some general
remarks pertinent to the period as a whole, the world situation will
discussed under eight main headings or sections, representing eight great
areas of the globe. These areas and their subdivisions have been somewhat
arbitrarily chosen, but seem to lend themselves satisfactorily to an orderly
consideration of the various societies and civilizations. One cannot prevent
certain over-lappings and certain difficulties with such a plan due to the
changing political boundary lines from century to century. As one example
it will be remembered that the Great Wall of China ended at Jiayuguan in
the west, marking the border of traditional China, and beyond this on
westward lies Central Asia. Yet today much of this land to the west belongs
to the present Chinese Peoples Republic, even though the inhabitants are
still chiefly Turkish and Mongolian peoples. So, in spite of the political
shift certain areas currently under the domain of China, such as Sinkiang-
Uighur (present spelling Xinjiang Uygur) and Tibet, will be considered in
this manuscript under the heading of CENTRAL AND NORTHERN ASIA.
Manchuria is considered an entity in itself, as part of the Far East complex.

Another matter which may annoy or confuse the reader as he progresses
through the text is the spelling variations. One must realize that language is
a spoken phenomenon and that what we call "written language" is really
only a notation system that attempts to recall the spoken words to the
observer. Thus when anyone attempts to write down a notation that seems
to him to record a spoken foreign word his rendition will depend on his own
language background and phonetics. The result may be only a rough
approximation at best, and the spelling will vary greatly with the nationality
of the translator. One of the most fascinating examples of this would be in
the spelling variations for the great Mongol leader whose name has been
variously written as "Jenghis Khan", "Chingis Khan", "Genghis Khan",
"Chinggis Khan" and perhaps others. The Mongols as a group have been
named "Khalkas", "Tatars", ''Tartars", "Cumans", "Kipchaks", or "Poloritse"
depending on the writer, his nationality and the location of the particular
Mongol tribe at the moment. It is well known that the English of ten use a
"k" where Americans use "c" as in such words as "Keltic"-"Celtic" and
"Khosru-"Chosroes", etc. Although this author has attempted to be as
consistent as possible there are probably many exceptions for which
apology is asked.

There is still another source of confusion concerning names. When the first
names of the monarchs of medieval and later Europe are all Anglicized we
get an amazing succession of Charles, Henrys, Johns, Williams, etc. In one
world history index I counted about sixty-five rulers named Charles. In this
manuscript in so far as possible the monarchs’ names will be given in their
own language so that differentiation may be aided. Thus in the
Scandinavian and Germanic countries Charles will be Karl and William will
be Wilhelm. Similarly the French Henrys will be Henris and the Portugese
John will be the native Joao while Peter will be rendered as Pedro. Other
examples will be apparent.

But that is not all! The Chinese emperors present special problems in
nomenclature, as all Chinese have traditionally had several kinds of
personal names, and special names were of ten added according to interests
or achievements. Posthumous names were often given prominent
individuals also to further complicate the situation. The old rulers of China
were seldom ref erred to by their personal names but rather by the epithets

of ancestral temple ceremonies, including the terms "tsu" (grandfather),
"tsung" (clansman or ancestor) or "ti" (emperor). Founders of dynasties are
commonly designated "Kao-tsu" (exalted grandfather) or "T'ai-tsu" (grand
progenitor). In addition the emperors of the Ming and Ch'ing dynasties
commonly coined era names indicating what they hoped the future would
bring and subsequently they might be called by their era-name. One trouble
is that some changed era-names several times during their reigns. Hucker
gives the example: "Ming T'ai-tsu began his reign in traditional fashion
with the era-name Hung-wu (swelling military power) -- 'the Hung-wu'
emperor is a technically correct alternative way of referring to Ming T'ai-
tsu."[footnote] But one does not correctly say that his name was Hung-wu"!
Hucker (Ref. 101), page 288n

One last warning. As this edition is being written almost all the Chinese
cities and places are being spelled anew, in an attempt to come closer to the
true phonetic rendition of the Chinese words. Since at the moment this only
seems to add to the confusion and since it will be some years before most
maps and texts will change to the new format, the old system of spelling
will be followed in this manuscript. Peking will still be "Peking" and not
"Beijing".

This text will occasionally also have special sections on selected subjects or
appropriate summaries of certain eras. Terminology with reference to dates
will be the traditional "B.C." referring to either years or centuries before the
birth of Christ, and "A.D." for a specific year after Christ. The latter
abbreviation, of course, is for Anno Domini, meaning "in the year of our
Lord" and is therefore not properly used to refer to a century.

Thus, for those centuries after the birth of Christ we shall use the
designation "C.E.", indicating the "Christian Era". Footnotes will be
indicated by number on each page, as demonstrated on this one. References
to the bibliography will be by number in the form (Ref. 34, 102) and
usually will be grouped at the end of paragraphs or sections to minimize
confusion during the reading of the text. Some "additional notes" will be
found at the end of the text, beginning on page 1181. Triple asterisks - *** -
in the text proper indicate that these additional notes are appropriate to that
paragraph. In some instances the page number is listed with the asterisks,

but otherwise the notes are easily found under the proper time-frame and
then the geographical division, just as in the main outline.

Geographical Presentation of Africa

Africa is a tremendous continent, measuring nearly 5,000 miles from north
to south and the same from the western edge at 20° north latitude to the
eastern "horn". It comprises over 20% of the earth's land surface.
Throughout the manuscript we shall discuss Africa under the subdivisions
listed below.

NORTHEAST AFRICA

This area includes present day Egypt, Sudan, Ethiopia and Somalia. It has
about 2,000,000 square miles and is a region where Hamitic and Semitic
Caucasoids have met and merged with Negroid stock. Many of the
Negroids seem different than other black Africans and some authorities
believe them to be a separate race, as for example — the Masai. (Ref. 83). In
ancient times part of Ethiopia (Abyssinia) was known as Axum, while
portions of the Sudan have been known as Kush and Nubia. The Nile River
runs through all of these countries with the exception of Somalia.

NORTH CENTRAL AND NORTHWEST

This area includes present day Libya, Tunisia, Algeria, Morocco and a large
part of the Sahara Desert. Overall there are nearly 3,000,000 square miles
and the majority of the present population is descendant from the original
inhabitants, as no invader ever brought many individuals to the area. Even
the great Arab waves of the 7th and 8th centuries probably involved less
than 200,000 people. The Berbers are a Caucasoid type, but with much
physical variation from tribe to tribe. They inhabit most of the coastal
region, much of the mountainous country and the oases. The basic
population of the Sahara proper, particularly its more southern portions, was
and is today basically Negroid, some native and some descended from
Slaves. (Ref. 83).

SUB-SAHARAN AFRICA

This area extends from far west Africa across the Sudanic plain as far east
as the Lake Chad environs, then down to the equatorial district as well as
central, east and south Africa and the major islands. This very large spread
of land has many and varied peoples and cultures, but historical material is
still relatively meager for most of it and from the standpoint of manuscript
space, it seems best to consider it under one section.

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Lesotho,

Africa

Choose Different Region

. America

. Central and Northern Asia
. Europe

. The Far East

. The Indian Subcontinent

. The Near East

. Pacific

NOUBWNPR

Africa: Beginning to 8000 B.C.

AFRICA

Before the Ice Age, in the Pliocene Era, there were ape-like hominoids
using weapons to kill prey in Africa. It is in the anthropological digs in
Tanganyika's Olduvai Gorge that one finds the possible origin of man a
million or more years ago. Some cutting tools there are dated at 3,000,000
B.C. Human habitation in Egypt goes back at least 200,000 years and there
are stone tools in Zambia dating to 700,000 to 500,000 B.C. About 110,000
years ago there was a major change in world climate (probably from
eccentricity in the earth's orbit) which gave rise to the Ice Age in northern
latitudes and to marked precipitation changes, both of distribution and
amount, on the African continent. Homo erectus disappeared and Homo
Sapiens, with middle Stone Age tool technology, appeared. Those men in
Africa were similar or identical to Neanderthal man in Europe and Asia.

About 20,000 B.C. during the Magdalenian period, there was a hunting
culture in North Africa similar to that of Spain and France, and the people
left remarkable rock engravings of wild, large animals in some areas. Later
post-ice age (Mesolithic) paintings had lost the naturalism of earlier ones
and may have been chiefly remembered symbolism within the tribes, after
the large animals had disappeared. Ateriaan bow and arrow makers in
Maighreb and Stillbay in Magosian settlements in south and east Africa are
dated to 185000 B.C. At that time there was a land bridge from near the
horn of Africa to the Arabian Peninsula. The large game animals -
mastodons and mammoths began to disappear from Africa some 50,000 to
40,000 years ago and the number of human hunters probably decreased
secondarily. Rock art has been found dating back to 25,000 B.C. in Nambia;
to 11,000 B.C. in southern Morocco; and to 7,000 B.C. in Cape Province,
South Africa. The first known Negro skeleton comes from Iwo Ileru in
Nigeria and dates to about 9,000 B.C.

Stone artifacts show the same radio-carbon dating. Flint blades, adapted
from ancient weapons, were used near the Nile for reaping wild wheat by

Notes

Note:Wild camels were present in northwestern Africa from the middle
Pleistocene down to the early Post-glacial period. (Ref. 313) Emmanuel
Anati (Ref. 299) dates the Namibia rock art to about the same period as
given in the text (26,000 to 28,000 years Before Present) and describes

polychrome painted slabs with animal figurines

Forward to Africa: 8000 to 5000 B.C.
Choose Different Region

Intro to Era

America

. Central and Northern Asia
. Europe

The Far East

. The Indian Subcontinent
The Near East

. Pacific

ONDURWNE

Africa: 8000 to 5000 B.C.

AFRICA
Back to Africa: Beginning to 8000 B.C.

About 7,000 B.C. a two-man plough was used in Egypt, one man ahead
pulling on a rope and the other pressing down the point. (Ref. 213) It is
assumed that hunters and pastoral peoples lived in great parts of Africa,
particularly the north and east at this time, but there is little or no evidence
of their culture except in the Sahara, itself. Some of the Tassili pastoral rock
paintings of that area may date back to 6,000 B.C. During the climatic
optimum from about 7,000 to 3,000 B.C. the Sahara was bush country, well
stocked with game. It well could have been a zone of human interbreeding
of races, in that today there are a number of Saharan and Sudanese tribes
which appear to be intermediate between Caucasoids and African Negroes.
Mediterranean dark-white Hamitic Caucasoids appear to have come from
Asia, bringing Cushitic languages about 8,000 B.C. and spreading south
along the Rift Valley of Africa to settle by the lakes in Kenya. They were
fishermen, using stone instruments and making pottery. (Ref. 83) But to
return to the area of the Sahara, certainly before 6,000 B.C. this was a
region of lush valleys, wooded hills and fertile rolling plains, and the rock
drawings of this early period suggest that the people were like the present
day Bushmen, now found only in the South African desert. But with the
disappearance of the big game, particularly the buffalo, these people were
apparently replaced by herdsmen from the east, perhaps the ancestors of the
present day nomadic Fulani peoples (Ref. 215, 176) Elsewhere in Africa
from about 6,000 B.C. on, some groups living near lakes or rivers adopted a
more settled way of life, using bone harpoons for fishing. Remains of these
have been found near Lake Chad, Lake Edward and Khartoum on the Nile.
(Ref. 88)

Forward to Africa: 5000 to 3000 B.C.

Africa: 5000 to 3000 B.C.

NORTHEAST AFRICA
Back to Africa: 8000 to 5000 B.C.

In this period there were Cushitic speaking Hamitic people along the Red
Sea and the Gulf of Aden on the coastline of the horn of Africa. In Egypt,
sometime between 4,500 and 3,100 B.C. the Badarian Culture existed, with
agriculture, irrigation, clearing of jungles and swamps and pictographic
writing, which may have been imported from Sumeria. These Badarians
may have come from south of Egypt via the Red Sea and Wadi Hammarat,
but it is possible that immigrants from Jericho also arrived, bringing food-
producing techniques. The overall population of the lower Nile was
probably less than 20,000 at 5,000 B.C. (Ref. 83) The climate was cold and
damp and the people wore kilts or long skirts made of linen or skins with
the fur inward. They lived in some type of tents or perishable wall homes.

Hippopotami and crocodiles were in evidence, and in the area of el Badari
there are bodies of dogs, sheep and oxen wrapped in matting or linen. This
suggests possible reverence for these animals. Lower Egypt had domestic
grazing animals from the Levant by about 4,500 B.C., but the Badarians
lived primarily in middle Egypt and their pottery dates to the second half of
the 5th millennium by thermoluminescence. That they had outside contacts
is evidenced by ivory spoons, shells from the Red Sea and turquoise beads
from the Sinai. Recent finds of a vast number of reed ships, many with
masts and sails have been made in the long dried-up wadi between the Nile
and the Red Sea which may well date back to this period. The Egyptians are
basically Hamitic, but may well have added mixtures of Nubian, Ethiopian
and Libyan natives, coming from the Sahara as it slowly dried, along with
immigrant Semitic or Armenoid tribes. Cattle were used as beasts of burden
perhaps by 4,000 B.C. The sail was used from about 3,500 B.C. on, and
pottery dating to 3,100 bears paintings of sickle-shaped sailing vessels,
apparently built with reeds and complete with cabins and centerboards.
Egypt was first united as the "Old Kingdom" under Menes|[footnote], who,
as king of Upper Egypt, subdued Lower Egypt and united the two with a
new capital established at what was later called Memphis. Although Egypt

had no copper or tin, it did have gold and there were fabulous goldsmiths in
Memphis (actually a clan of dwarfs) from the early days of the United
Kingdom. (Ref. 175, 94, 95, 45, 213)

Menes is now considered to be one and the same with the legendary King
Narmer of Hieraconopolis, so eulogized by Professor Toynbee. (Ref. 221,

68) Additional Notes

NORTH CENTRAL AND NORTHWEST AFRICA

A Neolithic Hamitic culture was present in Algeria and Morocco with
agricultural settlements and pottery by 5,000 B.C. The Sahara was quite wet
from 7,000 to 2,000 B.C. and the many lakes reached their maximum extent
about 3,500 B.C. when Lake Chad covered some 200,000 square miles. It is
now the only remaining lake with 15,000 square miles of water. The rivers
of the Sahara ran inland so that alluvial material gradually filled up the
inland basins, blocking and slowing the streams. In the fierce sun that
followed the changing climate, the water evaporated and the marshes dried
out. Salt deposits are still worked at such places as Amadror, Teghaza and
Taoudenni which are simply old inland basins. The people of the wet
Sahara were Negroid and they raised domesticated cattle and left beautiful
works of art on rocks with some figures as high as twenty-six feet.
Elephants, antelope, water animals and fish were abundant. The Negroid
people of this era were not the Bushmanoid, round-headed people pictured
on the rock drawings before 6,000 B.C. (Ref. 8, 176)

SUBSAHARAN AFRICA

At 4,000 B.C. there were two languages of the western Sudan family -
Yoruba and Idoma - but they were already very different and had apparently
been diverging for several thousand years. (Ref. 83) In tropical Africa there
were probably scattered bands of peoples whose descendants are the
pygmies of the Zaire forests and Bushmen of the Kalahari Desert. The first
true Negroes probably lived as fishermen along the Nile and the Niger
rivers and the savannah north and west of the forest about 4,000 B.C. (Ref.
175, 83)

Note:Archeologist M.A. Hoffman of the University of South Carolina
(Ref. 316) writes of the factors allowing the development of the "first
nation", under Narmer (Menes). At Hierakonopolis, in Upper Egypt, about
3800 B.C., there was slight seasonal rainfall, wooded grasslands, fertile
flood plains and easy access to the Nile. There were two settlements in the
area with mud-brick and wattle-and-daub houses spread over a 100 acre
area and having perhaps as many as 10,000 people. This is called the
Amratian period (also Nagada I) and excavations have produced
maceheads, as symbols of central authority. A huge pottery industry was
present, making Red Ware pottery which was traded up and down the Nile.
Some was used in the elaborate burials which were part of the Egyptians'
religious beliefs. Just after 3500 B.C., however, with the area becoming
more arid, potteries were abandoned and the Amratian period came to an
end, as people moved into more thickly settled villages along the wetter
Nile flood plain, initiating the Gerzean or Naqada II period, which lasted
until 3100 B.C. An elite class in the new villages built temples, palaces,
larger tombs and possibly an irrigation system, rendering the flood plain
able to produce bigger and more reliable harvests. But the water
Management and excess grain storage problems demanded more central
control. Various kings fought for dominance and finally it was Narmer,
who succeeded in political unification of the entire Egyptian Nile valley

Forward to Africa: 3000 to 1500 B.C.

Africa: 3000 to 1500 B.C.

NORTHEAST AFRICA
Back to Africa: 5000 to 3000 B.C.

Out on the horn of Africa, men in Somalia were producing frank incense
and myrrh for sale to Egypt as early as 3,000 B.C. The Cushitic-speaking
people continued expansion south of Egypt and into Nubia. Due to the
change in the Sahara climate, more Negro and Sudanic people settled just
west of the Cushites (also Kushites), increasing the population there (Ref.
8) Additional Notes

A map of Egypt of this period may be found in the early pages of the next
chapter. The exact dating of the various dynasties and eras of ancient Egypt
continue to be debated.

NOTE: Insert Map taken from Reference 97 (page 61)

The dates used in this manuscript are those given by Professor Easton in
The Heritage of the Past (Ref. 57) and these are fairly well coordinated with
those used in The Columbia History of the World (Ref. 68) and other recent
publications. The first stone constructed sepulchre of pyramidal design was
built at Saqqara, near Memphis, during the reign of Zoser (also Djoser), an
early king of the 3rd dynasty, between 2,700 and 2,630 B.C. This was
called the "Step Pyramid" and was actually the creation of Imhotep, chief
minister of the king, a man who was later deified. Recent desert studies
would suggest that this step pyramid and the larger ones to follow were
actually shaped after nature's own desert, wind-swept dunes of the western
desert. Sand-stone and solid rock mountains and dunes all seem to have
naturally assumed a conical shape, as the winds spiral about them to
exhaust their energy at the pointed top. It is very possible that the man-
made structures were modeled after these natural ones, and it is said that a
rocky knoll of unknown size underlies the Great Pyramid and that there is a
natural stone out-cropping at the tomb of Queen Khent-Kawes. It is thus
suggested that the ancients not only simply enlarged and refined already
existing natural conical structures, but that the very nature of these shapes

have allowed them to withstand the winds and sand storms of all the ages
since they were built[footnote]. Still more intriguing is the finding in the
desert of forms very much like the sphinx, indicating that where constantly
directed winds hit certain geological formations an unusual shape somewhat
like that of a reclining dog with raised head, is formed.

The conical shapes of primitive shelters from the American Indian tepees to
African and Arabian Desert tents and Mongolian and Kazak yurts in central
Asia may all resist the winds in the same way (Ref. 59)

Can the sphinx simply be a dressed-up natural formation of this type?
Similar shapes have been found in the desert as far back as 1909 (Ref. 59,
243) and there are suggestions of the same phenomenon in parts of Utah
today. Copper mines were developed in the Sinai by Pharaoh Snefu, a
successor of Zoser. He also used large ships to increase sea trade (Ref. 222).

Bronze was in use in Egypt by 3,000 B.C. and the great pyramids were
started about 2,600 B.C. in the time of Cheops of the 4th dynasty[footnote].
Because of the fertility of the Nile flood basins in this 3rd millennium, the
average peasant produced three times as much food as his family needed
and thus he was capable of feeding the flood control workers and the
builders of public buildings and Pharaoh’s tombs. The first wooden boats
were made in exact imitation of the old reed boats. An entire such vessel of
Cheops’, dating to 2,700 B.C., has recently been excavated from his
pyramid. It has a length of 143 feet and appears more graceful than a later
Viking ship, but could only have been used for ceremonies on the smooth
Nile, as it had no internal ribs and could not have survived ocean sailing.
Only the papyrus ships from which it was copied could withstand the ocean
waves.

Thomas (Ref. 213, page 32) dates the Great Pyramid at 2,900 B.C. and
comments on its exactly squared base, the 50 degree slope of all surfaces
and the fact that the stones are so well fitted together that a blade cannot be
inserted between them

All subsequent rulers of the Old Kingdom built great pyramids such as that
of Cheops and these edifices had great religious significance. There is no

doubt that great numbers of slaves were used in their construction, and they
were obtained chiefly from Nubia and some of these were even exported on

to Iraq. Toynbee (Ref. 220) feels that the 4th dynasty (2,600 to 2,500 B.C.)
represents the height of Egyptian Society culture and growth. The
population at that time was probably about three million, or more (Ref. 83).
Disintegration of the society or "time of troubles", according to Toynbee,
began in the 6th dynasty (2,300 to 2,200 B.C.) and for four centuries there
was no central control but only small feudal states ruled by provincial
governors, the "nomarcha", who levied taxes and kept small armies. Kings
did exist, but in name only. About 2,000 B.C. Amenemhet I, a Thebian
nomarch, marched down the Nile and established the 12th dynasty as a
central ruling government, beginning the "Middle Kingdom" of Egyptian
history. Toynbee considers this the "Universal State" of the degenerating
Egyptian Society, in which the sins of the pyramid builders were visited on
their successors, but Professor Cheilik (Ref. 28) describes this as a period of
increasing trade and contacts with other countries, in spite of some political
deterioration. When a mummy of Wah, an official of this Thebes Dynasty,
was unwrapped at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York they
estimated that about 365 square meters of linen had been used. This craft of
mummification had been developed over a long period and all the technique
is still not known. Certainly the first step was removal of the internal organs
of the deceased, sometimes by an abdominal incision, sometimes by a
corrosive agent introduced in an enema. The second step was dessication
with the use of natron, either dry or in solution. Finally the body was
anointed with balms and ointments and the extensive bandaging began. All
of this was simply to preserve the body as an eternal repository for the soul.
(Ref. 246)

The port of Byblos on the Phoenician coast was a large emporium for
Egyptian products and Egyptian wares were wanted in Crete and
Mesopotamia. With the conquest of Nubia a large supply of gold was
obtained and a high point of prosperity was reached under Senusert (also
Sesostris) III (1,878-1,840 B.C.). Egypt had a population at that time of

The Middle Kingdom ended with about two hundred years of turmoil and
disputes for the throne, until 1,680 B.C. when the nomad Semitics called
"Hyksos" (probably Canaanites) invaded from the Arabian area. These
invaders brought the domesticated horse with chariot warfare and men

using composite bows and were thus invincible at that time. They made
their capital in the Nile delta at Avaris and their overlords called themselves
"pharaohs". Previous to the advent of the Hyksos' horses the Egyptians had
used only the donkey as a beast of burden but the invaders did not penetrate
the country far from the Nile delta, and the Egyptians considered
themselves a distinct and separate people and did not easily accept strangers
or new ideas so they refused to adopt either the horse-drawn chariot or the
composite bow. The population as a whole was thus not greatly influenced
(Ref. 246)

About 1,567 B.C. another Thebian king, Kamose, started a war of liberation
from upper Egypt and recovered most of the territory from the invader
Semites. The job was completed by his brother, Amosis I, a few years later.
The Hyksos movement probably presented the final upheaval in the
Amorite series of expansions that will be discussed under the section on the
NEAR EAST, below. It was probably at the time of this Semitic domination
that the Biblical Joseph moved into Egypt (Ref. 231, 122, 8, 136)

The bow-drill was used in Egypt from 2,500 B.C. on and rules of
measurement, the plumb-line, construction of a right angle and the shaping
of stones with a mason’s square were all features of this society. Ahmes
calculated the area of a circle about 1,600 B.C. and Ptah-Hotep was a great
philosopher of the 3rd millennium B.C. The Middle Kingdom was also a
period of fine craftsmanship. A beer called haq was commonly drunk and
was made from red barley of the Nile valley. Bread was supposedly also
first made here in the dynastic period because of the development of a new
kind of wheat which could be threshed without the application of heat. The
ass, of African origin, was first used for regular trade between Egypt and
Iraq sometime after 2,000 B.C.

Our knowledge of Egyptian medicine (except for commentaries from Greek
and Roman writers) comes from seven medical papyruses discovered in the
last century. The oldest of these, the fragmentary Kahun Papyrus, deals with
veterinary medicine and women's diseases. The next, dating to about the
17th century B.C., is concerned with surgical matters beginning at the top
of the head and working down to the mid-chest. The longest of the papers,
the George Ebers Papyrus, dates to about the 16th century B.C. and is an

extensive therapeutic text written a millennium before Hippocrates and
containing prescriptions dating back to 3,700 B.C. It was probably a copy
of older documents. This papyrus, twelve inches wide, unwinds to a length
of sixty-six feet. Egyptians rather routinely removed all internal organs after
death, saving them in special containers as the body proper was
mummified, but they knew very little about the functions of these organs.
Although they paid much attention to cleanliness, having almost a national
fetish of keeping the gastro-intestinal tract clean with multiple purges,
emetics and enemas of every conceivable kind, disease was still rampant.
Mummies show evidence of tuberculosis of the spine with accompanying
spinal deformities and cold abscesses, club foot, polio and measles, not to
mention the undoubted parasitic infestations they must have obtained, and
still do, from the Nile. Eye diseases, particularly trachoma, leading to
blindness, were and are still common in Egypt. It responds some to copper
preparations and it is interesting that Egyptian women wore green eye
make-up, probably made from copper salts. In general, treatment was a
mixture of religio-magical gestures and the use of an extensive
pharmacopoeia and some limited surgical procedures such as cauterization,
circumcision and occasional trepanning of the skull, if indeed, this was
actually a medical procedure. Dentistry was advanced with prosthesis
construction as early as 2,600 B.C. Egyptian physicians had good
reputations throughout the ancient world and at home. There was apparently
a definite medical hierarchy, beginning at the top with the Pharaoh's
physician. Special training schools for physicians were attached to temples

NORTH CENTRAL AND NORTHWEST AFRICA

The Hamitic Berbers had a well established Neolithic Culture in a large area
along the coast of North Africa, but they had no copper. They were
probably descendants of the ancient Mediterranean peoples and related to
the Iberians and Basques. There were two major subgroups:

e The nomadic Tauregs of the desert who maintained strict hereditary
classes, with an ancient alphabet and using artistic trappings on their
camels and jewelry on themselves, and

e The Kabyles, particularly of Algeria, living as a settled tribe, long
famous for pottery made without the use of the wheel. (Ref. 46, 19)

Dessication of the Sahara set in about 3,000 to 2,500 B.C., causing some
pastoralists to move into the jungles of the Nile Valley and others to move
south with the rains. This shift to arid conditions in the Sahara may have
stimulated the emergence of civilization in Egypt. By 2,000 B.C., as
reflected in the Sahara rock drawings, rhinoceroses, hippopotamuses and
giraffes had already vanished from this area. Southward expansion of
cereal-growing occurred during the 2nd millennium B.C. as millet and
sorghum were domesticated as tropical crops (Ref. 215, 176, 8)

SUBSAHARAN AFRICA

The southern shift of the cereal-growing belt, due to the change in the
Sahara climate, resulted in an increase of the Negro populations. (Ref. 8)

Note:Kerma, 1,500 kilometers north of modern Khartoum, was the capital
of Kush. Egypt of the Middle Kingdom had to deal with these Nubians and
did so with forts at Senna, some 270 kilometers north of Kerma. The city
itself was an extensive urban development, particularly after 2000 B.C.
The large tombs of "royalty" contained animal sacrifices and some of them
even had up to 400 human sacrificed retainers. The Nubian culture spread
over central and northern Sudan. This particular culture of Kerma almost
completely disappeared after colonization of the area by the pharaohs of
the XVIII Dynasty of Egypt. (Ref. 303) After 1,520 the New Kingdom of
Egypt used Nubian gold to hire charioteers as a professional force. (Ref.
279)

Forward to Africa: 1500 to 1000 B.C.

Africa: 1500 to 1000 B.C.

NORTHEAST AFRICA
Back to Africa: 3000 to 1500 B.C.

The story of Northeast Africa in this period is essentially that of Egypt with
little change occurring in the adjacent regions, except for Cush or (Kush).
After the overthrow of the foreign Hyksos rulers local control was resumed
within the establishment of the New Kingdom of the Egyptian Empire, with
the great pharaoh, Thutmose III, taking over part of the coast of the Near
East and bringing Egypt in contact with other cultures. He even took an
interest in Asiatic flora and fauna and brought specimens home. Extensive
commercial ties resulted in imports of Cretan wares, Syrian amphorae and
African gold, ebony, ivory, hides and exotic animals. At about 1,500 B.C.
the Egyptians had pushed south to become the masters of Kush, "to protect
their security" and incidentally to obtain gold. The Kushites, who may have
descended from C-group Caucasoids, became increasingly Egyptianized.
(Ref. 83) The greatest geographical expansion, however, was reached under
Amenhotep III, about 1,390 B.C. This ruler had his likeness constructed in
two colossal statues across the Nile from Luxor, by transporting huge pieces
of quartzite[footnote] some four hundred miles from a quarry down stream
on the Nile. Recent scientific research, identifying the rock, would indicate
that the transport had to have been accomplished on a specially built lighter
drawn upstream by oars and gangs of draggers on the banks. About a
century earlier such a great barge was engraved on the walls of the temple
of Queen Hatshepsut at Deir-el-Bahri. (Ref. 231, 90)

The pedestal blocks with each statue made a total weight of 720 metric tons
each (Ref. 90)

NOTE: Insert Illustration (page 103)

Amenhotep IV allowed some political decline, but, changing his name to
Akhnaton (or Ikhnaton) he attempted to force a new, strictly monotheistic
religion on the Egyptian people, but the new faith did not last long.
Tutenkhamon ruled in 1,355 and Rameses II, who exhausted his resources
in wars against the Hittites and then married an Hittite princess, ruled about

1,250 B.C. He built the first Suez Canal, a task not too difficult then, as the
sea was higher than at present. A victory inscription of Pharaoh Merneptah
(about 1,224-1,214 B.C.) mentions the Hebrews, and this may have been
when Moses led the Hebrews back to Palestine. After 1,165 Egypt lost all
territory beyond the Nile valley itself. In the early part of this period under
the Ramessid kings of the XX dynasty, the dominant religion had returned
to the worship of the Sun God Re and Amon, but gradually the Osirian
church began to take over among the majority of the people. This involved
the worship of the God Osiris and his sister-wife, the nature Goddess Isis
and their infant son, Horus. The mysteries of this religion, including the
death and resurrection of Osiris and the interpretation of Isis as the "Mother
of God" spread throughout the Near East in the next many centuries, and
eventually served at one time as both a model and a rival for Christianity,
persisting well up to the 6th century C.E. However, at about 1,100 B.C. the
high priest of Amon took over the throne and the empire became a stagnant
theocracy. Even Kush was able to regain its independence. Invasions of
"Sea peoples" - mixed armies of Cretans and Luvians, perhaps - probably

The glory of Egyptian science was medicine. Public sanitation was
promoted and all were circumcised and taught to use enemas as cleansing
procedures. They used glass, linen, paper and ink, the calendar and
waterclock, geometry and an alphabet. The empire had a peaceful, internal
government with a regular census and post, both primary and secondary
education for some and technical training schools for administrators.
Wheeled vehicles were common, and they utilized bronze and such tools as
blacksmith bellows. The Nile valley lacked iron ores so the Egyptians were
limited in the use of the new military technology that appeared in adjacent
regions late in this period. In dynastic Egypt the basic diet of the peasant
consisted of bread, beer and onions, the first being a flat bread called "ta",
but nobles and priests could choose from some forty types of breads and
pastries.

Chickens were available and later the Nile marshes supplied eel, mullet,
carp and perch, and some of these fishes, dried and salted, were exported to
Syria and Palestine. (Ref. 136, 211)

NORTH CENTRAL AND NORTHWEST AFRICA

Neolithic Berbers continued to live in North Africa. The population of
Libya was added to by Anatolian Sea People, perhaps Cretans and/or
Luvians, who attacked Egypt about 1,400 B.C. and then colonized Libya.
Many of these invaders were later employed in the Egyptian navy.
Herodotus, Pliny and other ancient writers, described a people called
"Garamantes" who lived in present day Fezzan (375 miles northeast of
Timbuktu) and who traveled in two-wheeled chariots drawn by horses.
Rock engravings in this area have confirmed this. Were they part of the Sea
Peoples? Some say the Tauregs are their descendants. Definitely among the
Sea People were Shardana (or Sherden) who carried round shields, broad
swords and who wore feathered war-bonnets. Phoenician immigrants settled
in Morocco about 1,100 B.C. and these areas later became part of the
Carthaginian Empire.

This was confirmed by the Greek historian, Procopius, who wrote that this
Phoenician migration came at the time of King David's Hebrew wars. (Ref.
65, 176, 66, 175)

The Canary Islands in the Atlantic just off the coast of northwest Africa
were inhabited before the known arrival of Europeans by the Guanche, who
were a mixed Caucasoid and Negroid people, varying somewhat from
island to island, with blond and bearded men living next to dark-skinned,
clearly Negroid individuals. This has been confirmed both by early
descriptions and by mummies found on the islands. The "Canary Current" is
a strong, westward flowing Atlantic ocean current going straight from these
Canary Islands to the Caribbean Sea and the base of the Yucatan peninsula.
It is of great interest that the Olmecs, living at the western end of this
Canary current in America at this era, were identical physically with those
Guanche of the Canaries. The distance from these islands to Middle
America is equal to that from Asia Minor to the islands, but the former trip
is infinitely faster and simpler on anything, such as a reed-boat or even a
raft. (Ref. 95)

SUBSAHARAN AFRICA

Negro farmers inhabited the Sudanic belt and their population continued to
increase as fruits, vegetables and cereals were cultivated in the forest zone.
Ghana, in west Africa, had domestic cattle and goats by 1,500 B.C. There
was also pottery, stone axes, shale arm-rings and fine stone points, whose
use is unknown. In southern Mauretania, on the southern fringe of the
Sahara, excavations at Dar Tichitt have revealed the so-called Naghes
phase, dated from 1,200 to 1,000 B.C. and showing circular compounds
with evidence of cattle and goat herding, fishing and some hunting. The
people had stone axes, arrowheads, gouges, and pottery. In central and
southern Africa nomadic black Bushmen lived in the Stone Age. (Ref. 8,
45)

By 1,000 B.C. additional Caucasoid groups called "Azanians" brought
cattle and cereals to join the previously settled dark whites in the Kenya
highland and adjoining northern Tanzania. They left stone burial chambers,
hut circles, terraced fields, roads and traces of irrigation. By tradition the
Azanians were tall, bearded and red-skinned. In later centuries these people
were absorbed by the Nilo-Hamites and the Bantu Negroids. (Ref. 83)

Forward to Africa: 1000 to 700 B.C.

Africa: 1000 to 700 B.C.

AFRICA

Back to Africa: 1500 to 1000 B.C.

NORTHEAST AFRICA

At the beginning of the last millennium B.C. Kush (or Nubia) was an area
of fertile grassland, although now it is desert. Prosperity then in the area
depended on exports of ivory, ebony, gum, hides, ostrich plumes and slaves.
The northern Nubians were dark-skinned but probably of Asian origin,
while farther south around present day Khartoum, there were Negroes.
Ethiopia began to be colonized by Semites from Sheba in Yemen in the 10th
century B.C. Ethiopian legend says that their country was founded by
Menelik, eldest son of Solomon and the Queen of Sheba. In the 8th century
B.C. Kush was strong enough to conquer Egypt, perhaps with the help of
those Ethiopians, and they established the XXV dynasty in 725 B.C. (Ref.
83)

In Egypt the post-empire period of the New Kingdom lasted from 1,090
intermittently until 525 B.C. The internal decay of the theocracy was soon
followed, as is common in history, by invasion and dominance by foreign
powers. About 950 B.C. Shishong, chief of the Shardana tribe of the Sea
People who had faded into the Libyan desert some two centuries earlier,
revolted against the Egyptian monarch and installed himself as pharaoh in
the city of Bubastis, establishing the Libyan Dynasty, ruling both Egypt and
Libya. Egypt then became a maritime power, exporting alabaster vases with
various seals to Spain. The name "Shishonq" has also been found on some
American inscriptions, although the relationship is not clear at this time. As
mentioned above, the Libyans were followed in 722 B.C. by the Kushites
(and perhaps some Ethiopians) coming from the south. No cultural advance
occurred in Egypt in those troubled times. (Ref. 46, 175, 66).

NORTH CENTRAL AND NORTHWEST AFRICA

While the Libyans were in control of Egypt their influence and language
spread far and wide, even to the Indo-Pacific region where the Egyptians
had long mined gold (particularly Sumatra). Fell (Ref. 122) says the Libyan
language spread with Greek influences into Melanesia. In the
Mediterranean after 813 B.C. there were coastline colonies of Phoenicia,
notably the growing Carthage, located in the Bay of Tunis near the modern
city of Tunis. Archaeologists, however, have found nothing at Carthage that
can be dated before 735 B.C. Like the parent Phoenicia, Carthage also
manufactured a purple cloth by a secret dyeing process utilizing the
pigment from a sea snail, called "Murex", and the Greeks named the traders
who sold this, "Phoinikoi" or "The Purple People". The Romans then called
them "Punici" and later the word "Punic" came to refer exclusively to the
Carthaginians.

In Mauretania this period saw a decrease in rainfall and fishing was no
longer possible, but millet was cultivated in the fields. This was the Chebka
phase of the Dar Tichitt Culture. By 1,000 B.C. a new, Hamitic speaking
people from the north, ancestors of present day Berbers, had established
themselves in the Sahara region, with chariots, horses, goats and cattle.
(Ref. 65, 84, 66, 45)

SUBSAHARAN AFRICA

Most of southern Africa remained much as in the previous centuries.
Sometime in this 1st millennium B.C. a break in the forest belt in the east
allowed Stone Age farmers, herdsmen and perhaps cereal growers to spread
down the Rift valley from Ethiopia into central Kenya and northern
Tanganyika. (Ref. 8)

Forward to Africa: 700 to 601 B.C.

Africa: 700 to 601 B.C.

AFRICA

Back to Africa: 1000 to 700 B.C.

NORTHEAST AFRICA

Overpopulation in Yemen, on the Arabian Peninsula, forced bands of Arabs
to cross the Red Sea and settle on the northeastern edge of the Ethiopian
plateau. They were good farmers and irrigators and got along well with the
local Cushitic speaking people who had a similar degree of culture. (Ref.
83) There is some evidence that Phoenicians, with the Egyptian pharaoh's
support, were making sailing trips south out of the Red Sea at this time, and
perhaps they even circumnavigated Africa.

Early in the century, the Assyrians under General Esarhaddon, then at the
height of his power, swept down and subjected priest-ridden Egypt to
tribute and restricted the kings of the 25th (Kushite) dynasty to the country
upriver from Thebes. Esarhaddon put Necho, local prince of Sais, in control
of the delta region, but subsequently Necho's son, Psammeticus I broke
away from the Assyrians and re-established an independent Egyptian
kingdom again (26th dynasty-655 B.C.) and even pushed the Nubians and
Kushites out of upper Egypt. The chief contribution of the Assyrians to this
region was the introduction of iron, which soon spread up the Nile, as the
Kushites, retiring back to their capital at Napata, took the knowledge of iron

In mid-century there were many Greek immigrants to Egypt, including
mercenaries, colonists and traders. New crops were introduced such as figs
from Turkey, vines from Greece, sheep from Arabia and pigs from Sicily.
Currency replaced barter and caravan routes were developed. Slave labor
was used in mines and quarries. After 609 B.C. Pharaoh Necho (also Niku
IT) attempted to run a wide canal from the Nile to the Red Sea and expended
the lives of some 120,000 men in the process, but it was never completed.

Necho also had an army conquer Palestine, but the Babylonians ran them
out after about four years. (Ref. 83)

NORTH CENTRAL AND NORTHWEST AFRICA

Cyrene, Libya, was the site of an important Spartan Greek colony by about
630 B.C. Carthage had contined to develop and had iron-working in its
various settlements, a skill which then crossed the desert through trans-
Saharan trade routes. It was at this period that the Assyrians were attacking
the Phoenician homeland, and Carthage became increasingly more
important as a center for that civilization. Gradually the Carthaginian or
Punic dialect and alphabet came to differ from that of the Lebanese
Phoenicians. By the end of the century Carthage was receiving Etruscan
metals and pottery. Some of the latter was of truly Italian origin and some
imitations of Corinthian ceramics. (Ref. 8, 66, 75)

SUBSAHARAN AFRICA

On the west side of Africa there was further climatic deterioration after 700
B.C. The spread of people down the Rift Valley into east Africa continued
and both cattle and sheep were kept. The central and southern regions had
little change from the situation described in the last chapter.

Forward to Africa: 600 to 501 B.C.

Africa: 600 to 501 B.C.

AFRICA

Back to Africa: 700 to 601 B.C.

NORTHEAST AFRICA

As the century opened Egypt was again attempting expansion into Asia
under native rulers and a punitive expedition was sent south to sack the
Kushite Napota (591 B.C.) forcing the movement of this Kushite capital
south to Meroe. Another view, however, is that the Kushite rulers simply
elected to move their capital 300 miles south because wood for smelting
iron ore was becoming scarcer and the land was being overgrazed. At any
rate, Meroe then became a major iron center. Kush had a mixed Caucasian
and Negro population and thereafter remained independent of the various
Egyptian rulers. The nation owed its prosperity to trade in ivory, ebony,
gum, hides, ostrich plumes, iron and slaves, all of which were carried either
down the Nile to Egypt or across the Red Sea to Arabia and Mesopotamia.
They also had great herds of cattle and adequate agriculture[ footnote |.
Today this area of ancient Kush is almost completely desert. (Ref. 83)

Egypt maintained close commercial relations with both the Greeks and
Lydians. In the latter part of the century, the Egyptians were pushed back
out of the Asiatic mainland again by the rampaging Persians, and by 525
B.C. half of Egypt itself had been conquered by the Persian Cambyses, son
of Cyrus. After Cambyses committed suicide in 521 B.C., Darius continued
to rule most of this area. (Ref. 175, 8, 68, 28)

NORTH CENTRAL AND NORTHWEST AFRICA

By this time Carthage had developed an empire of its own, with settlements
in western Sicily and Sardinia and with contacts in Spain and along the
African coast. In 520 B.C. Admiral Hanno landed 30,000 settlers from 60

vessels at the mouth of the Rio de Oro in what is now Western Sahara. The
colony lasted about fifty years. (Ref. 222) Herodotus says that Phoenicians
circumnavigated Africa in 600 B.C., starting in the Red Sea and going
clockwise. Himilco, sailing from Carthage, touched the shore of Ireland and
found it a fertile land. All of this exploration and expansion brought some
troubles closer to home. Although they had previously been trading
partners, the competition between the Etruscan Caere and Carthage now
became so acute that conflict became inevitable. Malchus, of Carthage,
consolidated the Punic position in western Sicily and then tried to do the
same in Sardinia, although the native Sardinian states fought back viciously
and they were soon helped by the maritime Phocaean Greeks. Caere threw
in its lot with Carthage on this occasion. Herodotus, writing in the next
century, said that the Phocaeans| footnote] won but in so doing lost forty
ships and had another twenty severely damaged. They returned to Alalia,
got their women and children and resettled in Rhegum in south Italy,
leaving Corsica also to the Carthaginians and Caeritans. In 509 B.C.
Carthage signed a treaty with the rising Rome, defining respective spheres
of influence. (Ref. 84)

Herodotus described the Phocaeans as plunderers and looters. (Ref. 92,
Book 1, pp. 89, 90)

Barry Fell (Ref. 65) infers that after the Persian conquest of Egypt and the
rise of the Greek and Roman empires, the eastern Mediterranean was closed
to Carthaginian shipping, so Carthage retaliated by closing the straits of
Gibralter to all European vessels. Then under the guise of supposed Spanish
and north African trade, they exploited North American silver, copper,
hides and furs, bringing them back for the manufacture of bronze and the
marketing of the furs. He feels that this secrecy is the reason Roman annals
have no mention of the trans-Atlantic voyages. To date no one has come
forth with any direct confirmation of this hypothesis.

SUBSAHARAN AFRICA

That part of Africa south of the Sahara and the Abyssinian massif was one
of the five great remaining reservoirs of savage or barbarian life. The other
four areas were the monsoon forests of Southeast Asia with the islands of

Indonesia, the steppe and forest zones of northern Eurasia, Australia and
finally the Americas. (Ref. 139)

Forward to Africa: 500 to 401 B.C.

Africa: 500 to 401 B.C.

AFRICA

Back to Africa: 600 to 501 B.C.

NORTHEAST AFRICA

Perhaps as early as this century the art of iron smelting was imported into
Sudan from Egypt via Kush, which had become an immensely rich country.
The early inhabitants of Axum on the Ethiopian plateau south of Kush were
probably of mixed Asian and Negro origin, and they were joined about 500
B.C. by settlers from southern Arabia, some of whom were apparently
Jews. An Ethiopian-Jewish community, as well as a later Christian one, has
existed in Ethiopia[ footnote] up to the present time. From those contacts
arose the legend that the Queen of Sheba bore a son by Solomon, who
became emperor of Ethiopia and founded the Solomaic Dynasty. (The
Queen of Sheba, of course, lived in the 10th century B.C.)

The word "Ethiopia" is Greek for "burnt-face". Actually this region was
usually called "Abyssinia" until 1923. (Ref. 83, 240)

Egypt continued to be ruled by the Persians, with no advance in their own
civilization except that their economic isolation was eliminated and they did
complete the Nile-Red Sea canal which had been begun by Necho.
Apparently the original Egyptian cotton was a poor product and linen from
flax dominated Egyptian clothing. (Ref. 213) The Egyptian science of
previous centuries began to be picked up by Greeks who had colonies at
Naucrates on the Nile delta, with others along the coast towards Libya. All
of this was further developed in the subsequent Hellenic Culture. (Ref. 136,
28, 175, 83)

NORTH CENTRAL AND NORTHWEST AFRICA

In addition to the Greek settlements along the Libyan coast there were
Phoenician colonies all along the western half of the North African shore
from Leptis (east of Carthage) to the Pillars of Hercules. Carthage was
rapidly developing an empire of its own, controlling the old Tartessus area
of Spain by 480 B.C. and later gaining all of the western half of the African
Mediterranean shore line. It was mentioned in the last chapter that at the
end of that century Hanno, of Carthage, had established a large colony
down the Atlantic coast of Africa. Other writers have dated this colony,
some 2,600 miles down the Atlantic, at 490 B.C., but in any event,
archeologists have shown that Hanno was not the first, as there were
already ruins of a large megalithic city of Lixus, far south of Gibralter, just
where the ocean current sweeps past to go directly to the Gulf of Mexico.
The Romans later called this ancient city the "Eternal City" or by a still
older name, "Sun City", as it was apparently built by sun-worshippers who
included astronomers, architects, masons, scribes and expert potters. The
Sumerians, Assyrians, Hittites, Phoenicians, Egyptians and the Lixus
people were all fanatic sun-worshippers, just as were the Olmecs and the
Mochica in Mexico and Peru, respectively. The Carthaginian Himilco also
continued his trips up to the northern shores of Europe to obtain tin for
bronze . In his effort to find the ultimate source of that metal, and avoid the
Celtic middle men of France, Himilco finally found the channel islands and
then the coast of Britain, either at Cornwall or Devon, eventually to
discover the tin mines of Cornwall. (Ref. 28, 136, 95, 66) The Carthaginian
position in the Mediterranean was weakened in 480 B.C. when a large
Carthaginian force suffered an humiliating defeat at the hands of Greek
Syracusans in northern Sicily. Carthage then seemed to also lose its former
Etruscan ally, the city-state of Caere. Perhaps this occurred because Caere
had tried to establish a colony on the Atlantic island of Madeira as a means
of interrupting the Carthaginian merchant marine's monopoly of the tin
supply from Gaul and Cornwall. (Ref. 75)

In addition to the civilized centers of Egypt, Kush and Carthage, the 4th
century center of Cyrene, in present day east Libya, must be mentioned.
This was a Greek city, settled in the previous- century but which now
dominated an entire community area which was prosperous and cultured.
(Ref. 83)

SUBSAHARAN AFRICA

The climate continued to deteriorate in the Sahara and life in the Akan jeir
Culture of the Tichit Valley of southern Mauretania was becoming
progressively more difficult. In this century the areas of Ghana and Kanem
began development, probably with the help of Berbers from the north, and
with the economic foundation of the export of gold and slaves. Excavations
south of Lake Chad give evidence of people, stone and bone implements
and cattle-raising at the beginning of this century. (Ref. 83) In Nigeria an
iron industry developed on the Jos Plateau, and sculptured heads and
figurines in terracotta dating to 500 B.C. have been found near Nok, in that
country. About the same time, the Negroes, starting northwest of the rain
forests, migrated down through the forest along the great rivers to the
central part of the southern savannas and then spread out in all directions to
the eastern part of the continent and toward the south. They spoke the Bantu
language, which is the ancestor of most African languages today. These
men took knowledge of mining and iron with them. (Ref. 45, 8, 175)
Hottentots and Bushmen still lived in the far south.

Forward to Africa: 400 to 301 B.C.
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CONDMDUBRWN FE

Africa: 400 to 301 B.C.

AFRICA

Back to Africa: 500 to 401 B.C.

NORTHEAST AFRICA

Kush continued its prosperity with extensive trade routes. The ruins of both
Napata and Meroe still stand today and there are the remains of pyramids
like those of Egypt but also Hellenistic pillars, Arabian arches and even
hieroglyphs with Hindu-like symbols, all suggesting a cosmopolitan
atmosphere. Axum continued to exist still farther south. (Ref. 175)

The Egyptians revolted successfully against the Persians under the 28th,
29th and 30th dynasties, but late in the century, as we shall see, the
Macedonian-Greek Alexander took over the old Persian territories,
including Egypt. The city of Alexandria was founded just before
Alexander's death in about 323 B.C. and there was soon accumulated there
a great research library containing perhaps 400,000 manuscripts in
literature, mathematics, astronomy and medicine. Later, as Alexander's
empire was divided, the Macedonian general, Ptolemy, took over Egypt and
helped make it into a great commercial nation.

NORTH CENTRAL AND NORTHWEST AFRICA

A portion of what is now Libya went with Egypt as part of the Persian
Empire and then later Alexander's. Otherwise the chief point of interest was
Carthage which in- creased in population and power and participated in
intermittent wars with Sicily. Between 310 and 306 B.C. the navies of
Carthage and the Sicilian Greeks were in a terrible conflict with the
Carthaginians gathering a great invasion force of about 1,500 vessels. In so
doing, however, they had to leave the gates of Hercules unguarded, thus
making it possible for the first time in some years for the ships of other

Mediterranean nations to reach the Atlantic. (See WESTERN EUROPE,
this chapter). To pay their soldiers, after conquering Sicily, the
Carthaginians engaged the finest Sicilian Greek artists to make dies for
casting new Sicilian-Carthaginian coins, and these were soon circulating
wherever the north Africans had business dealings.

In the post-Alexander period at the end of the century the Libyan Greeks of
Cyrene became the major source of learned men at the court of the
Ptolemies in Alexandria. Cyrene exported chiefly horses and silphium, an
herb used in Roman cooking. (Ref. 66, 211)

SUBSAHARAN AFRICA

By 300 B.C. permanent settlement in the Tichit Valley in the southwest
Sahara had ended because of desiccation. The Sudanese Negroes, stretching
across the continent just south of the Sahara now had iron technology and
with greater population, better agricultural methods and possibly greater
social cohesion, they were able to expand southward throughout Africa at
the expense of indigenous inhabitants whom they conquered, absorbed or
displaced. In the early centuries they confined themselves to the drier
regions where their cereals could grow. These were the people known in the
east and south as "Bantu", although actually the name refers to their
language, rather than to any particular tribe. (Ref. 68, 45)

Forward to Africa: 300 to 201 B.C.
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CONMDUBWNF

Africa: 300 to 201 B.C.

AFRICA

Back to Africa: 400 to 301 B.C.

NORTHEAST AFRICA

One thousand miles south of the Mediterranean (in what is now the
Republic of Sudan) the Kingdom of Meroe flourished through this period.
At first the culture was Egyptian but later it developed a unique African
character with its main industry being iron working. It also had gold. This
society was a successor to Kush, simply with a new capital at Meroe. Still
farther south was the Semitic Habashat Kingdom, established by migrating
Yemenites, with a capital at Axum. The local Cushites soon began to accept
the language and customs of these Semites and the country began to
prosper, exporting ivory, tortoise shell, rhinoceros horn and finally gold,
through the Red Sea. (Ref. 83)

The real story of this corner of Africa, however, remained in Egypt. In spite
of the Greek conquest of the previous century most of Egypt remained
Egyptian and there was a return to Egyptian political ideas. Ptolemy II
(Philadelphus), reigning from 309 to 246 B.C. took the title of Pharaoh, the
God-King, although personally he was a modest man, intelligent and
creative. Under him there was continued expansion along the Phoenician
and Asia Minor coasts. Ptolemy III (283 - 221) followed. An interesting
aspect of Ptolemaic Egypt is its extensive experiment in state socialism.
Although royal ownership of the land had long been a custom, the king now
supervised all economic activity. The government decided which fields
were to be planted and with what, where crops were to be sold and for how
much. It regulated transportation, processing, manufacturing, trade and
banking, sold abandoned babies and taxed everything. From about 275 to
215 B.C. this system made the Ptolemies the richest Hellenistic rulers. This
wealth was lavished on the city of Alexandria which became the greatest
trade center in the world and acted as a fusion center for people of many

religions, including a great number of Jews. The Alexandria Museum was
actually a university, engaged in research and records and a certain amount
of teaching. During its active phase it helped to produce Euclid,
Eratosthenes, Apollinus, Hipparchus, Hero and Archimedes.

At this time the center of Greek medicine also shifted to Alexandria, with
Herophilus, anatomist, and Erasistratus, regarded by some as the founder of
physiology. He distinguished between motor and sensory nerves, gave
names to the heart valves and studied arteries, veins and lymphatic ducts.
Actually a number of different sects of medicine such as Dogmatism,
Empiricism, Methodism, Pneumatism and Eclecticism developed or
radiated out from Alexandria. One of the Dogmatists, Herophilos, was
responsible for a number of human anatomical descriptions including
various parts of the brain, the intestinal tract, lymphatics, liver, genital
organs, eye and the vascular system. The Museum functioned at a high level
for only a century, however, and after Ptolemy II it was swallowed up by
the Egyptian priestcraft. Attic-Greek was the language of education and
administration. (Ref. 47, 125, 15, 224)

The Alexandria library was more permanent. Included in the tremendous
collection of some 700,000 volumes| footnote] was the "corpus
Hippocratum" made up of some genuine Hippocratic writings but also
treatises and notes of his pupils and even some material from a rival
medical school at Cnidus. Eratosthenes became librarian in 235 B.C. and
became the founder of the science of geography by making maps and
conceiving the idea of projections. In 239 B.C. he calculated the
circumference of the earth at 28,000 miles, an error of only 13%. This
means that a degree of latitude was thought to be 60 miles, rather than the
true 69 miles, an error not great enough to forestall ocean crossings with a
fair degree of certain landing. He based his calculations on the proposition
that the earth was a sphere and that the sun's rays for practical purposes may
be considered to be parallel. Longitude was calculated by dead reckoning.
Eratosthenes also reported that papyrus ships, with sails and rigging as on
the Nile, sailed as far as the mouth of the Ganges and Ceylon, taking
perhaps twenty days to go from the former to the latter, thus averaging
about 75 miles per day, a speed of more than three knots an hour. (Ref. 15,
65, 66, 95)

Equal to 50,000 modern books. (Ref. 15)

Toward the end of the century radical decay set in, with bureaucratic
corruption and slackness. As the century ended the aggressive Syrian king,
Antiochus III, defeated the child Ptolemy V and took the Mediterranean
coastal possessions of Palestine, Phoenicia and Asia Minor away from the
Egyptian Dynasty. There is some indication that bubonic plague, or
something very similar, made its first appearance in Egypt and adjacent
Libya in this century and then disappeared again for another 800 years.
(Ref. 140)

NORTH CENTRAL AND NORTHWEST AFRICA

Carthage was now the richest of the Mediterranean cities, trading in slaves,
Egyptian linen, ivory, animal skins, Greek pottery and wine, iron from Elba,
copper from Cyprus, silver from Spain, tin from Britain and incense from
Arabia. Some Carthaginian planters occupying fertile land in Libya may
have had as many as 20,000 slaves. (Ref. 222) In 261 B.C. Carthage
supposedly had 1,500 ships with approximately 150,000 crewmen. This is
to be compared with the famous Spanish Armada of A.D. 1588 when Spain
had 120 ships and 27,000 crew-men, Carthage soon reduced Numidia to a
series of vassal states and became the capital of a Semitic empire which
spread all along north Africa as well as in the islands of the Mediterranean
and in Spain. Although the level of civilization was high in most respects,
some of their customs were barbaric, such as sacrificing living children to
certain male and female gods. The details of Carthage's great struggles with
Rome will be given in later sections under ITALY and SPAIN. It will
suffice to say at this time that at the end of the First Punic War a local
revolution broke out in Carthage which raged for forty months. And still
Carthage bounced back to fight the greater Second Punic War with Rome.
At the end of this second conflict, when Hannibal was defeated by Scipio at
the gates of the city, it was the beginning of the end of this great city-state,
although it struggled on until the middle of the next century. (Ref. 48, 66)

It is somewhat difficult for us today to grasp the magnitude of the Punic
Wars. The First was marked by some of the greatest sea battles in history.

Consider the following, as collected from ancient historians by Fell (Ref.
66):

Roman Carthage Carthage

ate vane Ships Ships Losses
260 Battle of 150 150 50 ships
B.C. Mylae ships ships P
256 Battle of 230 230 84 ships
B.C. Economus ships ships P
255 asec 200 200 100
B.C. oie ships ships ships
242 Battle of 200 100 100
B.C. Aegates Island ships ships ships
Baas 334
ships ships
lost

Each Carthaginian ship had a crew of at least 250 rowers, with 120 more
officers and marines. The losses of men in these great sea battles must have
been staggering.

Another interesting fact about Carthage at this period is that their coins
changed from silver to gold, but with just a small amount of gold - the
amalgam called "electrum" - at about 300 B.C. The design also changed to
depict the native Carthaginian goddess, Tanith, spouse of Bel. Based on
findings since 1976 of alleged Carthaginian coins of this period found in

various north American sites, Fell (Ref. 66) believes that the source of the
Carthaginian gold was America, obtained from Amerindians in bartering
with bronze manufactures of the Cypriot Phoenicians. Such bronze works
are now held in storage rooms in Cuenca, Brazil, collected by Professor
Paul Cheeseman. This region was a former Inca northern capital, noted for
burial hoards and underground valuables. Fell also believes that these same
North African mariners traded with North American Algonquin tribes for
timber which they used for ships. After the terrible naval defeats by Rome
and the absence of a navy, trade with America was no longer profitable or
even possible.

SUBSAHARAN AFRICA

In northern Nigeria the so-called Nok Culture has been identified with terra-
cotta figurines, and evidence of iron slag and tin-mining, dated by radio-
carbon technique to about 300 B.C. Along the high cliffs of Bandiagara on
the edge of the Hombori Mountains near the bend of the Niger River in
Mali, the Toloy people built granaries of mud coils and stored them in giant
caves in the cliffs, while their villages were probably on the plains below.
(Ref. 251) Along the Congo River there were Stone Age gathers and
fishermen about 270 B.C. In the east and south there was a continued take-
over by the Sudanese Negroes who were now called Bantu, after their
language. (Ref. 45, 8)

Forward to Africa: 200 to 101 B.C.
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CONAMAUBWN FH

Africa: 200 to 101 B.C.

AFRICA

Back to Africa: 300 to 201 B.C.

NORTHEAST AFRICA

In the southern part of this area Kush as well as Axum continued to
flourish. About 200 B.C. Egypt lost all its acquisitions outside of
continental Africa as the Ptolemaic armies were defeated by the Seleucids
at Panion. The Macedonian dynasty continued to reign, however, and their
administrations promoted continued intellectual and commercial activity,
particularly at Alexandria. The welding of Egypt and Syria onto the
rejuvenated Ionic Greek world created a high economic unit and allowed
cities of the magnitude of ninety to one hundred and fifty thousand people
to develop, the first of these being, of course, Alexandria. By the end of the
century the Egyptians were chafing under the Hellenic Ptolemy ruling class,
however, and eventually the Egyptian priesthood swallowed up the
Ptolemies as they also destroyed the Aristotelian mentality of the Museum,
and scientific energy was extinguished. (Ref. 46, 28, 206)

NORTH CENTRAL AND NORTHWEST AFRICA

Carthage recovered from the Second Punic War and regained considerable
prosperity although it was subjected to frequent raids from neighbors such
as King Massinissa of the Numidians, who were the ancestors of the
Berbers. In 151 B.C. Carthage finally declared war on Numidia (now
primarily Algeria) and a year later Rome joined the battle, initiating the
Third Punic War. For three years Carthage valiantly withstood the Roman
siege engineered by Scipio Aemilianus, but the city finally fell and in 146
B.C. the Romans brutally plundered and burned it, possibly to prevent its
falling into the hands of the Numidians. (Ref. 83) This pretty well
terminated the old Phoenician Empire, but the Punic cisterns remained and

street plans were preserved and later used as patterns for Roman
reconstruction.

After this last Punic War Massinissa's son, Micipsa, ruled Numidia and
remained an ally of Rome. Misipsa's heirs included a nephew, Jugurtha,
along with his own two sons. By 116 B.C. Jugurtha had one of the sons
assassinated and had run off the other and taken his own case for control of
Numidia before the Roman Senate. The latter gave most of Numidia to
Jugurtha except for the city of Cirta which was granted to the remaining son
of Misipsa, Adherbal. Jagurtha promptly set siege to Cirt, killing off all the
inhabitants including some Roman business men, thus incensing Rome and
particularly the Equestrian business community. Armies were sent to North
Africa once again, this time against Numidia, but Jugurtha was not defeated
until his father-in-law, Bocchus, King of Mauretania, was persuaded by
Lucius Cornelius Sulla to betray him. The African struggle ended in 105
B.C. with Jugurtha a prisoner and strangled in Rome. The Romans then
spread west from Carthage, also controlling Morocco. (Ref. 53, 28, 175)

Polybius, the Roman historian, regarded the North African Greeks as a
people considerably different from those of Greece, itself. They were olive-
skinned and represented a fusion of Greek and North African natives. These
were the Libyans and they were devoted to the sea, living all along the
North African coast from Cyrene next to Egypt, west to Mauretania on the
Atlantic. The area included not only what we now call Libya but also
Tunisia, Algeria and Morocco. A long chain of ruined, once great, beautiful,
marble and limestone cities now mark the places where these seafarers once
lived. When Libyan kings ruled Egypt their ships sailed to the Atlantic ports
of Spain and Fell (Ref. 66) says to the Americas across the Atlantic and to
the Pacific via the Indian Ocean and the Malacca Strait. The ancient
Libyans living west of Cyrene spoke a dialect of pre-classical Arabic
containing many Berber loan words. According to Fell's hypotheses this
may be the origin of the Arabic found in some American locations.

SUBSAHARAN AFRICA

Radio-carbon datings from the walls and potsherds of the mud buildings in
the Mali region caves of the Toloy people indicate that they were still there
in this century, but not subsequently. (Ref. 251) This was an era of
continued Negro migrations down the entire continent. This gradual
occupation of almost the whole of the arable soil of Africa in the west by
Negroes and of the east and south by the Bantu-speaking groups, overall
took about 1,500 years, during which time sub-Saharan Africa was largely
cut off from the rest of the world.

Forward to Africa: 100 B.C. to 0
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Africa: 100 B.C. to 0

AFRICA

Back to Africa: 200 to 101 B.C.

NORTHEAST AFRICA

Meroe, now the Republic of Sudan, continued to flourish one thousand
miles south of the Mediterranean and Axum continued with some
prosperity in the area of northern Abyssinia, now Ethiopia.

In the first part of this century Egypt remained under the Macedonian
Ptolemy Dynasty but Caesar marched into the country and took control
between 48 and 47 B.C., making the famous alliance with Cleopatra,
Egyptian queen. Upon his death Cleopatra made a similar alliance and
dalliance with Marc Antony and such was her apparent charm that in 37
B.C. Antony gave up all interest in his government and settled with the
queen in Alexandria to a life of pleasure. Stripped of his office by the
Roman Senate and defeated at sea by Octavian, he committed suicide in 30
B.C. along with Cleopatra. Egypt was then formally annexed to the Roman
Empire under the Emperor Octavian, although the life of the average
Egyptian was probably little affected by these administrative changes. At
the end of this century there were about 8,000,000 people in this country.

NORTH CENTRAL AND NORTHWEST AFRICA

Numidia, now Algeria, joined Carthage to become Roman during this
century. The thick belt of megalithic tombs which have been found across
north Africa date to this and the next century and thus have no
chronological relationship to the similar but much more ancient ones of
Europe. No explanation has been offered. The Roman historian, Sallust, of
this century, writes that the Libyans were descended from a people who
came from Asia Minor and were allied to the Phoenicians through their

language. Arab historians have recorded similar beliefs. (Ref. 215, 176, 66)
Cyrene, with its large Greek component, became a province of Rome in 74
B.C. (Ref. 222) In the Sahara, itself, water holes had essentially disappeared
and there was now truly desert. The great dunes called "ergs" had formed

and the rains had become most irregular.

SUBSAHARAN AFRICA

There was no great change in the southern two-thirds of the continent. Iron
working continued to spread at a slow pace in the Niger Basin. The camel
was introduced into the Sahara from Asia about 100 B.C. The Bantu
speakers continued their slow migration down the eastern lands. (Ref. 8)
One theory, based on archaeological and skeletal remains, suggests that at
about the end of the century a few of the Caucasoid pastoralists descended
from the eastern highlands into South Africa. From them some Bushmen
acquired cattle and evolved into the culture of the Hottentots. (Ref. 83)

Forward to Africa: 0 to A.D. 100
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Africa: 0 to A.D. 100

AFRICA

Back to Africa: 100 B.C to 0

NORTHEAST AFRICA

In the south of this region the kingdom of Meroe continued its iron-making
and gold production, unmolested. The kingdom of Axum in north Ethiopia
and southwestern Arabia now became a strong empire, with a capital city of
the same name and Adulis (now Massawa) as the Red Sea port and with a
wealth founded on ivory. Axum was a pagan city of palaces and temples
which now had many Jew[footnote|] and Greek immigrants. The country
had many Greek insignias and a Greek educated king. (Ref. 45, 175, 83)
The Falasha of today are the descendants of these Jews (Ref. 83)

Egypt continued under Roman rule. In Alexandria the Jewish population
increased reaching perhaps to 40% of the total of the city. Among those was
the Jewish philosopher and theologian, Philo, who developed the Logos
ideas of the Greek Stoics into a concept which has come straight down
through the centuries in the Christian theology. "God, in Philo's writings, is
the essential being of the world, incorporeal, eternal, indescribable; reason
can know his existence, but can ascribe no quality to him--."[ footnote] In
order to create the world and establish relations with man, Philo felt that
God used a group of intermediary beings. While these had been called
diamones by some Greeks and Ideas by Plato, they were called angels by
the Jews. Although popularly conceived as persons, Philo thought they
existed only in the Divine Minds as the thoughts and powers of God, such
powers as the Stoics called Logos, which created and then guided the
world. "Philo sometimes thinks of the Logos as a person. In a poetic
moment he called the Logos "The first-begotten of God', son of God by the
virgin Wisdom, and says that through the Logos God has revealed himself
to man. Since the soul is part of God, it can through reason rise to a mystic
vision, not quite of God, but of Logos[footnote]. Durant (Ref. 48) felt that

Philo's Logos was one of the most influential ideas in the history of thought,
although its antecedents in Heracleitus, Plato and the Stoics are obvious.
"Philo was a contemporary of Christ, but he apparently never heard of him
although he shared unknowingly in forming Christian theology. Philo tried
to mediate between Hellenism and Judaism. From the Judaic point of view
he failed; from the historical point of view he succeeded, and the result was
the first chapter of the Gospel of John”.[footnote]

As quoted from Durant (Ref. 48), page 501

The translations of these ancient writing are those of Fell (Ref. 86), page
54, and to my knowledge not otherwise confirmed

Quotation taken from Durant (Ref. 48), page 502

During the period of the Roman administration of Egypt the irrigation
systems were raised to great efficiency. While the government remained
Roman, the people remained Egyptian (and Jewish in the cities). Additional
Notes

NORTH CENTRAL AND NORTHWEST AFRICA

Roman Carthage was the capital of proconsular Africa and second only to
Rome, itself, in the western Mediterranean. It became a center for education
and soon a strong- hold for early Christianity. Plutarch, living in this
century, allegedly described voyages of the Carthaginians to North America
(Epeiros, in his language) via Iceland (Ogygia) and a return route following
the anti-trade winds around latitude 40 degrees north, back to Spain and
Carthage. Diodorus of Sicily described a southern route when he spoke of
the discovery of an island by Carthaginians which may have been Cuba.
(Ref. 84, 66)

The ruler of Mauretania (northern Morocco and western Algeria), another
Ptolemy, was murdered in A.D. 40 on the order of the Roman Caligula, but
it did not destroy the Berber spirit of independence and they never
completely gave up to the Romans. The dromedary, one-hump camels first
were brought to the Sahara in this century but they were not used to any
great extent for another seven hundred years with the Arab invasion. (Ref.
260)

SUBSAHARAN AFRICA

In West Africa on the inland delta of the great Niger River there existed at
this time, and probably it had existed for over two hundred years, the
village of Jenne-jeno, which has just recently been excavated. Situated only
about 300 miles up river from Timbuktu it is probable that even in this early
time there were beginning trade relationships by water. Pottery in use
through this period was of a design seen several centuries earlier in the
southern Sahara, indicating that the original population may have originated
there. We shall hear much more about this community which did not reach
its peak of development until about A.D. 100. (Ref. 268)

Madagascar had probably been unknown to men until about the time of
Christ, when Indonesians arrived with out-rigger canoes and eventually
sails. Beginning in this century these sea-farers brought "wet-zone" crops
like the Asian and Coco yams and banana to Madagascar and thus to East
Africa[footnote]. Madagascar had probably been unknown to men until
about the time of Christ, when the Indonesians arrived with out-rigger
canoes and eventually sails. With their new crops the Negroes found it
possible to start moving into the humid forests and low-lying river valleys,
thus beginning the settlement of more central Africa. The Bantu-speaking
people continued their slow migration down the east coast of Africa. There
was iron smelting in Kenya by A.D. 100. (Ref. 222)

Hallett (Ref. 83) puts this at the 4th century C.E.

Forward to Africa: A.D. 101 to 200
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NOUBWNFP

Note:From this century on until the 19th century first the Aksumite and
then the Christian Amhara were expansionist, seizing land and
incorporating people. (Ref. 311)

Africa: A.D. 101 to 200

AFRICA

Back to Africa: 0 to A.D. 100

NORTHEAST AFRICA

The kingdoms of Meroe and Axum continued to develop. (See page 292)
Egypt was under the rule of the Roman emperor, but beyond the mouth of
the Nile, the country was actually little touched by Romanization. The royal
custom of brother-sister marriage had been copied by the lower classes, and
it has been estimated that by this century two-thirds of the citizens of
Arsinoe were off spring of sibling unions. Alexandria was now a great trade
center containing some 500,000 people, receiving goods from Red Sea
ports and exporting its own manufactured products such as linen, processed
Arabian drugs, Indian perfumes, papyrus, glass-ware and Egyptian grain.
This city which originally was one of the greatest of the Greek cities,
gradually became more and more oriental. Strife between Greeks and Jews
resulted in massacres; soldiers mutinied and taxes soared.

Ptolemy, or Claudius Ptolemaeus| footnote], was a great scientist concerned
with the Alexandrian library in this century. Inspired by Hipparchus, who
appeared to have provided one of the links between Babylonian and Greek
science, Ptolemy wrote a mathematical treatise which became known as the
Almagest. The 360 degree circle of the Babylonians was used, trigonometry
was promoted and astronomy advanced, although with some errors. With
1,002 stars catalogued the heaven was considered spherical and as rotating
around the immobile earth sphere. This concept made Ptolemy's theories
very acceptable to the theologians of the later Middle Ages. He did have a
system showing relationships of stars and planets which was effective from
the practical standpoint. He also wrote a Geographical Treatise which
included the geography of Marinus of Tyre. (Ref. 48)

Not to be confused with the pharoahs of the B.C. centuries

NORTH CENTRAL AND NORTHWEST AFRICA

North Africa remained the granary of Rome, with the Moors as the
dominant people of the area now developing considerable sea-power and
prestige. The Moors were of Berber origin (later with an Arab mixture) and
came originally from south of Morocco in the country of present
Mauretania, on the great Atlantic bulge of Africa. In about A.D. 125 a
locust invasion destroyed large areas of cropland and this was followed by a
plague which killed perhaps 500,000 in Numidia and possibly 150,000
more on the coast. (Ref. 222)

SUBSAHARAN AFRICA

The changes in central, eastern and southern Africa were very slow. As
noted in the last chapter, the introduction of wet zone crops like the yam
and banana allowed better penetration of the Bantu-speaking blacks into the
forest and low-lying river valleys and coastal plains. They also continued to
drift south along the Indian Ocean coast. (Ref. 68)

Forward to Africa: A.D. 201 to 300
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CONDMDUBRWN FE

Africa: A.D. 201 to 300

AFRICA

Back to Africa: A.D. 101 to 200

NORTHEASTERN AFRICA

The kingdom of Kush fell prey to desert nomads but in Ethiopia Axum
continued as a powerful, well developed entity. Coins were minted and
much of the Sudan to the west was conquered. Ivory, rhinoceros horn,
hippopotamus hides and slaves were all exported through the Red Sea
harbor of Adulis. Unfortunately even at this early period excessive rains
with flooding, along with forest clearing and cultivation of hilltops and
slopes had started soil erosion that was to eventually be part of the downfall
of this unusual kingdom. (Ref. 175, 270)

Egyptian prestige[ footnote] began to decline under destructive factionalism,
a massacre of all adult males capable of bearing arms (by Emperor
Caracalla) to prevent revolt, high taxes, listless forced labor and Rome's
annual exaction of grain. Sea trade from the Mediterranean went principally
up the Nile to Thebes, then over to the Red Sea and on by boat. The
refurbished Nile-Red Sea canal was a disappointment to the Romans (as it
had been to the Ptolemies and the Persians) because winds in the northern
Red Sea were unreliable and merchants did better with the Nile to Thebes
route. At the last of the century (266 to 272), Queen Zenobia's conquering
of Egypt and siege of Alexandria resulted in the death of half the population
and helped Egypt's decline. (See IRAQ AND SYRIA, below) In A.D. 272
Egypt was reconquered by Rome. (Ref. 136)

Diophantus, a Greek of Alexandria, wrote a treatise of algebra, solving
determinant quadratic and indeterminate equations up to the 6th degree, in
about A.D. 250.

NORTH CENTRAL AND NORTHWESTERN AFRICA

Rome continued to dominate the coast line of north Africa, but in the far
northwest Moorish (chiefly Berber) culture and activity increased with
expansion of the territory they controlled. The cities of the Sahara had a
flourishing commerce with coastal cities, probably sending precious stones,
slaves and ivory for trade. (Ref. 83)

SUBSAHARAN AFRICA

At this time there was the beginning of the development of the Empire of
Ghana at the northern curve of the Niger River. The village of Jenne-jeno,
which we have previously mentioned, may have been a part of this process.
On the east the iron and cattle cultures spread almost completely to the
southern tip of Africa. Blackburn was established in A.D. 105 and the use
of iron spread from the Funa River (off the Congo) to Katanga and the
Lakes region. In the southwest, the Khoikoi peoples, speaking the Khoisan
language, only slowly gave way to the aggressive Bantu-speakers.
Indonesian traders appeared in increasing numbers along the east coast in
this and the following centuries.

Forward to Africa: A.D. 301 to 400
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CON MDUBWN FH

Africa: A.D. 301 to 400

AFRICA

Back to Africa: A.D. 201 to 300

NORTHEASTERN AFRICA

In the region of Sudan the old Kushite Kingdom had been replaced by the
Kingdom of Meroi, although the basic population remained a Kush people.
The new kingdom had a unique African character but it did not thrive long,
apparently conquered sometime between 320 and the end of the century by
neighboring Axum of northern Ethiopia. The name "Kush" now
disappeared, to be replaced by "Nubia". The Nobatae, coming from
Kordofan and the Blemmyes (Bela) coming from the Nile Valley to the east,
blended with the old Kushites to form the population of medieval Nubia.
Before Christianity came to this area there are indications that this was, in
modern terminology, a "swinging place". Remnants of a large tavern
constructed in the middle of the century at Ibrim indicate that the wine
flowed freely up to about A.D. 500. (Ref. 271, 83) The populous Axum had
adopted the Monophysite Christian faith and this new religion was the
foundation of the kingdom which was soon to be called Abyssinia. By 362
this kingdom also included a portion of the southern Arabian area. A
distinguishing feature of Axum was the use of stone-masonry without
mortar. There is still standing a 23 meter high obelisk, simulating a nine-
story palace, constructed in this 4th century when this state was considered
one of the four world powers. (Ref. 270) The Axum emperor, King Ezana,
had been converted to Monophysitism by the Syrian Frumentius who had
originally been shipwrecked on the Red Sea coast.

The resulting Ethiopian Orthodox Church, actually a branch of the Egyptian
Coptic, spread over the highland of north Ethiopia. (Ref. 8, 175)

In Egypt there was political and cultural decline. Christianity made many
converts along the coast but of the Monophysite variety. This sect believed
that there was only one nature in God and Jesus, with a complete denial of

the Trinity. This faith survives today in some eastern areas and, as
suggested above, particularly in Ethiopia. Arianism, another great "heresy"
which was mentioned above, also originated in Alexandria. In contrast to
the dogma of the Monophysites, Arius preached that Christ was not one
with God but rather the Logos (See Philo, page 297), the first and highest of
all created beings. The Son was neither coeternal with nor consubstantial
with the Father. Politically, Egypt remained nominally under the Roman
Empire, even as it began to collapse. A popular literature in the Coptic
language appeared in this century. (Ref. 48, 127)

NORTH CENTRAL AND NORTHWEST AFRICA

The coast line of North Africa remained subject to Roman control as the
Christian faith spread across the area. As in the last century, in the west the
Berber-Moors became more and more prolific and independent. Although
camels had been present in Africa previously they now came into extensive
use by the Berbers, a feature which helped them to become formidable
opponents to all foreigners along the coast. In the 370s Firmus, a Moorish
chieftain, rebelled against the Roman Valentian I and was stopped only after
a series of massacres. (Ref. 127, 83)

SUBSAHARAN AFRICA

There was very little significant change from the last century. In the west
the Empire of Ghana continued its development, while all along the east
coast the Bantu-speakers expanded and more Indonesian traders appeared
bringing the Asian yam and taro from Southeast Asia. The latest estimate of
the time of the establishment of Great Zimbabwe by Bantu-speaking blacks
is A.D. 320 (150 years). These were the Gokomere people and they may
either have lived there or simply used it as a camp. There is some evidence
that they had iron. (Ref. 176, 8, 83, 222)

Forward to Africa: A.D. 401 to 500

Africa: A.D. 401 to 500

AFRICA

Back to Africa: A.D. 301 to 400

NORTHEAST AFRICA

Ethiopia continued to be a Christian area in communication with southern
Arabia and Egypt. Axum expansion in the first half of the century was
followed by a period of stagnation in the last half although Byzantine
missionaries and traders continued to visit the region. Nominally under
Axumite control, Nubia apparently was not really Christianized in this
century. The religious and political confusion of this period is apparent in
four papyri recently discovered at Qasr Ibrim. Three were written in Sahidic
Coptic and the fourth in provincial Greek. The Coptic ones were all
addressed to Tantani, Governor of Nubia and apparently Christian. The
Greek document is from a pagan king of the Blemmyes to the king of
Noubades and refers to a former supreme king of Nubia, called Silco. (Ref.
270, 271)

Nominally still under control of Rome, Egyptic Society, according to
Toynbee (Ref. 220), became extinct in this century leaving no "off-spring"
in any subsequent society, to date. The little intellectual activity that
remained in the remnants of the Roman Empire was now centered in
Byzantium, but considerable religious maneuvering continued in
Alexandria. Cyril, Patriarch of Alexandria, and later one of the two or three
St. Cyrils, led a great struggle against Nestorianism which finally
culminated in the Council of Ephesus in 431. Cyril presided and had the
support of Pope Celestine 1. His doctrines, although considered orthodox at
the time, were actually in part those of Monophysitism and after him this
became the national faith of Egypt - eventually the Coptic Church. (Ref.
220, 48)

NORTH CENTRAL AND NORTHWEST AFRICA

In contrast to Egypt this part of Africa was a very busy place. In the far
west Morocco was invaded and conquered by Berbers coming from the
southwest, and then they even attacked the Roman holdings, using newly
domesticated camels. In 427 Bonifatius, Roman military commander in
north Africa, was about to be cut out of command by enemies in the
emperor's court in Ravenna, so he rebelled and called upon the Vandals of
Spain to come to his aid. In the following year, Asding Vandals from Spain
did go to north Africa, sailing with a large fleet under King Gaiseric who
proceeded to conquer most of north Africa, eventually even Carthage (A.D.
455) and then Sardinia, Corsica and the western part of Sicily. The total
number of Vandals leaving Spain was probably not over 80,000 but they
had the advantage of local social unrest and the cooperation of Bonifatius
and thus met little local resistance. Many Berbers and the Donatist heretic
group of Christians with about one-half of their bishops also helped the
invaders against the Romans. The Donatists were the followers of the once
Bishop of Carthage, Donatus, who denied the efficacy of sacraments
administered by priests who were themselves in a state of sin, and the
Church, willing to risk so much on the virtues of the clergy, repudiated the
idea.

As a result of their persecution the Donatists became bands of
revolutionists, at once both Christian and communist, condemning poverty
and slavery and ending in fanaticism, happy to help the Vandals, who were
Arian Christians. Once Gaiseric had obtained Carthage he used the facilities
there to greatly augment his navy and subsequently was able to actually
sack Rome, itself. Barry Fell (Ref. 66) believes that some orthodox
Christians actually sailed to North America at this time to escape the
Vandals. According to Herodotus, the Garamantes of Fezzan in the desert
had horse-drawn chariots, probably obtained from Egypt. (Ref. 206, 8, 127,
137, 83)

Among the more orthodox Christians of North Africa was St. Augustine,
who had become converted from paganism and sin as a youth and who later
wrote extensive theological dissertations rationalizing the religion and
establishing many Catholic doctrines, as he introduced some element of

Greek philosophy into Christianity. It was mentioned in the last chapter that
Thomas (Ref. 213) considers him one of the four great "fathers" of the
Catholic church. He was killed during one of the Vandals' sieges.

SUBSAHARAN AFRICA

In the Sudan, the roots of the great African Kingdom of Ghana may date
back to A.D. 400. Certainly the town of Jenne-Jeno was prospering at the
inland delta of the Niger. The eroded foundation of a house has been
excavated along with pottery and urns for burial and remains of a wall
about three meters wide and four or more meters high that girded the city.
All of these things have been dated to this or the next century or two. In
central Africa there was continued proliferation of the black people,
particularly the Bantu-speakers. (Ref. 268, 154)

Forward to Africa: A.D. 501 to 600

Africa: A.D. 501 to 600

AFRICA

Back to Africa: A.D. 401 to 500

NORTHEAST AFRICA

There were three separate Christian kingdoms in the region of Nubia in the
middle Nile. At [brim an old temple, which was originally built probably
during the Ethiopian Dynasty of Egypt in the 7th century B.C. and then
modified later with typical Meriotic graffiti and votive inscriptions, was
now made into the earliest of [brim Christian churches. A defensive wall
around the church is now partially covered by Lake Nasser. (Ref. 271)

Early Abyssinians were active militarily, invading the Yemeni kingdoms on
the Arabian Peninsula. In the middle of the century Axum was at the height
of its power with a splendid court boasting royal elephants and gold. The
capital city funneled materials from inner Africa to a maritime network
reaching as far as Spain and even China. Axum covered an area of 75
hectares and contained many multistory stone buildings with 10,000 to
20,000 inhabitants and a fringe of suburban, elite villages. (Ref. 270) But
the downfall of this country started when the Persians expelled the
Axumites from south Arabia as a part of the Byzantine-Persian Wars. This
was followed by raids by pagan Bela on the farmlands, so that gradually the
people moved deeper into the highlands, merging with the pagan and
Judaized people there and becoming the Abyssinians proper, the nucleus of
later Ethiopia. (Ref. 82, 83)

Egypt continued to decay, politically and intellectually. Part of this was
promoted by the decline in the incense trade which had previously come
from the south, in part through Egypt. The country remained nominally
under the control of the Byzantine Empire.

NORTH CENTRAL AND NORTHWEST AFRICA

The Vandal kingdom of North Africa was reconquered for the Byzantine
Empire by Justinian's General Belisarius in 533. Otherwise North Africa
remained much as in the last century. (Ref. 8)

SUBSAHARAN AFRICA

In the tropical regions the availability of iron after A.D. 500 led to the
development of kingdoms whose chief weapons were iron spears. A few
Negroid Bantu-speakers filtered into the Bushman and Hottentot domains in
South Africa. (Ref. 213, 83)

Forward to Africa: A.D. 601 to 700

Africa: A.D. 601 to 700

AFRICA

Back to Africa: A.D. 501 to 600

NORTHEAST AFRICA

The Ethopian upland soils had been largely destroyed, exposing underlying
rocks. In the middle of the century, threatened by Muslim neighbors, Axum
lost its Red Sea ports and had its gold supply cut off so its Christians
retreated to the highlands, where they remained in isolation until the 15th
century. Abandoned buildings deteriorated and contributed to the soil
destruction. Land abandonment can be as destructive as over-use and there
can be little doubt that all this exacerbated Axumite economic decline. (Ref.
270)

To the west in Nubia, Coptic Christians thrived. After an Egyptian attack in
651-652 relations between Christian Nubia and Moslem Egypt were
formalized by treaty which included an agreement that Nubians would
return all runaway slaves to Egypt. A cathedral was built about A.D. 700 in
Qasr Ibrim and there were plans to make this a pilgrimage center. Nubia
hereafter remained Christian for about 700 years. Just north of the present-
day Aswan Dam, the survival of paganism into this 7th century on the
island of Philae had been a notable scandal stimulating Byzantine missions
into the area. (Ref. 271)

Egypt fell to the Persians temporarily in 616 but fell again to the Arabs later
in the century, with Alexandria conquered by the latter in 660. The
Monophysite Christians of Egypt actually helped the Moslems overthrow
the existing administration. After the conquest, Amr ruled for the Arabs and
did so well. (Ref. 206, 137)

NORTH CENTRAL AND NORTHWEST AFRICA

In the last third of the century the raiding Moslems easily took Tripolitania
but on their original drive westward they were repulsed from Tunisia by
Roman Empire troops. Subsequently, however, conversion of the
indigenous Berbers[footnote] to Islam in 696 gave Islam a new push and
the Byzantine forces in Tunisia were then overrun and Carthage was
destroyed again. Soon Morocco also fell to the Islamic onslaught. Shortly
thereafter trade routes for slaves, ivory and gold opened up between
Morocco-Algeria and the western Sudan. The Murabits (also Almoravids)
of Morocco turned south, shattering the Negro Empire of Ghana.

"Berber" is an Arab word meaning "barbarian"

The Berbers were of an entirely different race from the Arabs, having
roundish heads contrasting with the Arabs' long heads. Even when some
were initially converted to Islam, allowing the Moslem advance, most of the
Berbers retreated to the naked mountains dividing Tunisia's coastal plains
from the desert. Even so, the Muslims made a greater impact on these
people than Rome or Christianity had previously done. (Ref. 137, 175, 58,
83, 222)

SUBSAHARAN AFRICA

From 500 to 1,200 ancient Ghana, in what is now Mali, monopolized the
gold trade from west Africa to Europe. It sat at the southern end of the
trans-Saharan caravan routes and thus acted as the hub. Kumbi Saleh was a
city of 15,000 people. The excavated ruins of the ancient city of Jenne-Jeno
had a formidable three meter-wide wall surrounding it which was
constructed sometime between 400 and 800. Delicately constructed gold
jewelry has been found under this city wall, indicating that this was a trade
center over a long period of time. The nearest gold mines were 800
kilometers south of this developing city. (Ref. 268) The Moslem invasion of
Ghana from the north caused some disruption in administration certainly,
but did not destroy the fundamental culture or the developing cities.

In the far southeast of Africa the Leopard's Kopje people, a Bantu-speaking
group, were in control of Great Zimbabwe from about A.D. 600 to 850.

(Ref. 45) Elsewhere the great bulk of Africa remained as in previous
centuries.

Forward to Africa: A.D. 701 to 800

Africa: A.D. 701 to 800

AFRICA

Back to Africa: A.D. 601 to 700

NORTHEAST AFRICA

In the last chapter we told of the collapse of Axum. Apparently as a last
gasp. the Axumites made an unsuccessful attack on Mecca in A.D. 702
which was followed by Arab retaliation and Butzer (Ref. 270) says that it
was at that time that the port of Adulis was destroyed and many Red Sea
islands seized. At the same time the Christian monarchy had to withstand
ravaging attacks by pagan Beja. (Ref. 83) After 765 Axum was almost
completely abandoned.

The horn of Africa was not affected by the Bedouin Arabs, but the people
there still retained close ties with Arabia. Of the three kingdoms of the
middle Nile which had originated in the 6th century, the two northern ones
now merged to form the Kingdom of Nubia, with a capital at Dongola,
exerting its influence from the 1st to the 4th cataract of the Nile and west to
Darfur. The country was Christian, prosperous and used a highly decorative
pottery and developed a lucrative slave trade to Egypt. There was a gradual
peaceful infiltration of Moslem Arabs into the area. Farther south at the
confluence of the Nile was the Kingdom of Alwa, with its capital at Soba. It
resisted the Moslem faith a little longer. (Ref. 83, 271)

Egypt was entirely under Moslem Arab control with supervision direct from
the caliph in Damascus and later Baghdad.

NORTH CENTRAL AND NORTHWEST AFRICA

This entire region was now under Moslem control, subject to the caliph in
the Middle East. As mentioned in the last chapter, the Berbers of Tunisia

and Morocco adopted Islam as they had previously adopted Christianity:
with neither was it a total embracement and they, in addition, clung also to
older tribal beliefs. Although called "Berbers" by the Arabs they called
themselves "Imazighen", "Men of the Land", and their tongue, totally
unlike the official Arabic, was Tamazight, still spoken today. (Ref. 104) The
great Roman ports all over the Mediterranean were allowed to decline.
Although they could sail the Indian Ocean, the Arabs ignored
Mediterranean shipping routes and went overland with of central Tunisia,
was the administrative center for the Arab Empire in the Maghrib. (Ref. 83)

Although the Omayyad Dynasty controlled the entire Moslem world in the
first half of the century, as was intimated above, the Abbasids took over in
A.D. 750 with Caliph Harun al Rashid establishing a capital at Baghdad. By
A.D. 788 Morocco had declared its independence from Baghdad and
Tunisia followed just after the turn of the new century. The new Moroccon
Empire was to last over a millennium. (Ref. 8, 222)

SUBSAHARAN AFRICA

About A.D. 700 people from the upper Nile moved into Chad, just east of
Nigeria, and established a string of cities. At about the same time traders
were becoming ever more daring in crossing the Sahara to obtain gold and
slaves. The increasing use of camels greatly facilitated this traffic and the
traffic, in turn, seemed to monopolize the supply of gold and slaves and
thus developed more systematic and larger operations. Ghana seems to have
come under the control of a new dynasty in this century and this may have
been the transfer of authority from Berber to Negro rulers.

Merchants of south Arabia, the Persian Gulf and northwestern India had
long traded along the east African coast for palm oil, ivory, tortoise shell,
rhinoceros horn and slaves. Finally some of the Asians settled in east Africa
and they were soon joined by religious refugees from Oman and Shirax on
the Persian Gulf . These Asians were responsible for the beginning of a
chain of independent settlements all along the coast. They became city-
states and because Arab shipping soon supplanted earlier traffic, all soon
became Moslem. Excavations on the shore of Lake Kisale in northern

Katanga (between Angola and the Great Lakes) indicate that in this 8th
century there was a dense population using fine pottery and elaborate
copper jewelry. This may be the original home of the Luba people (Ref. 83)

The population on Madagascar now included Indonesians, Arabs and
Negroes, the later probably originally slaves or concubines. The Negroes
multiplied more rapidly, probably because of greater resistance to malaria,
but there was much intermarriage and soon a unique "Malagasy" people
emerged. (Ref. 83)

The central rain forest of Africa and the semi-arid south remained
untouched by civilized men, although the Bantu-speaking tribesmen
continued to spread their settlements through the forest of the Congo basin
and still farther south. The Leopard's Kopje people were still in control of
Zimbabwe. (Ref. 139, 176)

Forward to Africa: A.D. 801 to 900

Africa: A.D. 801 to 900

AFRICA

Back to Africa: A.D. 701 to 800

NORTHEAST AFRICA

The old Axum monarchy established a new residence deep in the interior of
Ethiopia around Lake Hayq sometime before A.D. 870. This was actually a
Christian monastery with some 300 clerics. The old Axumite area was
given up entirely to invading sheep herders. (Ref. 270) Nubia remained
essentially as in the last century.

Egypt was a Moslem state but independently ruled by the Tulunid Dynasty.
These men were Turkish in origin, having been brought into Islam as
professional soldiers. One of them, Ahmad ibn Tulun (869-884) conquered
Syria to add to his realm. Egypt, as the ancient granary for southern Europe,
no long robbed of its products by foreign masters, entered upon a minor
renaissance, with new learning and art, palaces, public baths, a hospital and
a great mosque honoring Tulun.

NORTH CENTRAL AND NORTHWEST AFRICA

All of the original Moslem provinces in north Africa were now more or less
independent with separate rulers. After 800 Tunisia was ruled by the
Aghlabid Dynasty until the end of the century when they were overthrown
by the Kotama, a Berber tribe from Kabylia. Morocco, under the Idrisids,
had founded a Shi'ite caliphate in 789 which had carried on into this
century. Still farther west, just on the Mediterranean side of the Straits of
Gibralter, were the Rostemids. (Ref. 137, 8) (Please see map in connection
with CENTRAL EUROPE, this chapter.)

There were three major trade routes across the Sahara at this time. One
went from Fezzan to Kanem, running north of Lake Chad; a second went
from Gao, on the Niger bend, to central Maghrib; and the third ran from the
western Maghrib to Ghana. (Ref. 83)

SUBSAHARAN AFRICA

Commerce across the Sahara brought gold and slaves to the Mediterranean
and stimulated the early Negro states of the sub-Saharan regions. Ghana
had few natural resources of its own and its wealth was derived from levies
imposed on this trade across the desert. We have seen in previous chapters
how Jenne-jeno developed as a trade center on the Niger. By 800 it had
perhaps 10,000 people and an extensive riverine trade with the Timbuktu
region. (Ref. 268) To the Arabs, the ruler of Ghana was reputed to be the
richest and most powerful monarch in all the Biladas-Sudan (Land of
Blacks). Around

Lake Chad the empire of Kanem-Bornu developed about the beginning of
this 9th century and survived for a millenium. This kingdom, founded by
Zaghawa nomads, was originally only one of the seven Hausa city-states,
each protected by strong city walls and excelling as manufacturers and long
distance merchants. (Ref. 68, 175)

On the east coast of Africa a great wave of trading activity swept the
countries bordering the Indian Ocean, resulting in a string of city-states
along that coast, most of them founded by Muslims from the Persian Gulf
and some from southern Arabia. Bantu-speaking Negroes soon joined them
to produce a distinct culture and language (Swahili). Farther south in
Zimbabwe, the Shona and particularly the Karangas sub-group, continued
in this century to develop agriculture, stock raising, gold and copper trading
and the building of large stone edifices. They probably originally came
from iron-rich Katanga and had an advanced knowledge of iron mining and
metallurgy. They soon became the overlords of the indigenous Gokomere
and Leopard's Kopje people as the Rhodesian plateau became a beehive of
gold, copper and iron production. The products went to the Arab merchants

on the coast. The Shona civilization lasted until A.D. 1500. (Ref. 175, 176,
45)

Forward to Africa: A.D. 901 to 1000

Africa: A.D. 901 to 1000

AFRICA

Back to Africa: A.D. 801 to 900

NORTHEAST AFRICA

The off-shore islands of Ethiopia thrived on the export of Abyssinian
slaves. Some apparently escaped to settle in Danakil and Somali, there to
intermarry and become converted to Islam. Inland royal power was
assumed in the mountain region of Lasta sometime after A.D. 940 by a non-
Semitic Zagwe Dynasty. While these people became Christianized, Semitic
farmers expanded southward along the forested spine of Ethiopia to modern
Addis Ababa. At the same time Sidama tribesmen invaded from south and
east. (Ref. 83, 270)

In 905 the Turkish Tulunid Dynasty of Egypt gave way to the Ikhshidids
who, in turn, were again subject to the Abbasid caliphate of Damascus
although this domination was short lived as the empire began to split. At the
end of the century the Fatimids moved in from northwestern Africa to take
control of Egypt. They were a branch of the Isma’'ilites, claiming descent
from Mohammed's daughter, Fatima. Sugar cane was now grown in Egypt,
with the sugar produced by an advanced process. (Ref. 137, 260)

NORTH CENTRAL AND NORTHWEST AFRICA

We noted in the last chapter that the Aghlabid Dynasty had fallen to the
Berbers. In this century these victors welcomed Ubaid Allah, a Shi'ite
"Mahdi" [footnote] from Syria, who used the Berber armies to establish a
new north African, Fatimid Dynasty. They destroyed Tahert and dominated
Fez, eventually establishing their capital in Cairo as they assumed control in
Egypt. (Ref. 83) The Moroccan Idrisids resisted for some time, but with the
Spanish Omayyids attacking also from the north, the Moroccans finally fell

to the Fatimids. (Ref. 137) As the Berbers expanded northward in Morocco
and the Arabs came westward along the coast, there was a shift in the
balance between the sedentary cultivators and the nomadic pastoralists.
Nevertheless, Morocco, Algiers and Tunisia had a renewed prosperity with
the establishment of great trade routes across the Sahara and increased
commerce with Spain. In the desert, itself, however, cruel famines were
suffered by small towns and warfare contributed further to their demise.
(Ref. 8, 176)

"Mahdi" is a Moslem title of an expected spiritual and temporal ruler
destined to reign righteously over the world

SUBSAHARAN AFRICA

By the end of this century most of Africa was out of the Stone Age. (Ref.
83) It was the time of the apogee of the Kingdom of Ghana with its capital
at Kumbi and extending from near the Atlantic coast almost to Timbuktu. It
was essentially Negro, consisting of a group of federated tribes with a fairly
well developed culture. Writing of the wealth and wisdom of this African
kingdom, the Moslem Ibn Hawagal said that Ghana boasted that its people
had hoards of gold and "the wealthiest of all kings on the face of the earth"
[footnote]. The recently excavated city of Jenne-jeno reached the height of
its development and by the end of the century may have had close to 20,000
people. This and satellite communities had penetrated the marketplace of
North Africa. Goods, produce and gold flowed north via river and caravan
while Saharan salt and Mediterranean glass beads came south. (Ref. 268)
Quotation from historical map of the National Geographic Society, (Ref.
154)

Pressure from the Berbers now forced the city-states of Chad to unite into a
kingdom called Kanem-Bornu, or the Kanuri Empire, founded by a desert
people and having the longest surviving dynasty in history, not being
overthrown until the 19th century. A trans-Saharan slave trade running from
west Africa east to the Arabs began in this century and lasted for hundreds
of years. (Ref. 175, 8, 213) The Arabs began to colonize the east coast as
far south as Zanzibar but never reached or knew of Madagascar, in this
century. (Ref. 137) Ancestors of present day Kikuyu tribes migrated into

Kenya from the south. They were Bantu-speakers who were in the process
of spreading out from the Congo in the transition period from Stone Age
hunting to the Iron Age and agriculture. (Ref. 175, 8) Zimbabwe continued
to be occupied by the Shona people who traded in copper and gold.

Forward to Africa: A.D. 1001 to 1100

Africa: A.D. 1001 to 1100

AFRICA

Back to Africa: A.D. 901 to 1000

NORTHEAST AFRICA

In Ethiopia there was a revival of power under the Cushitic-speaking Zagwe
Dynasty. Old documents link King Yimrha-Kristos to the Egyptian Coptic
patriarchs Cyril II (1,077-1,092) and Michael (1,092-1102). Meanwhile the
Semitic component of the country spread westward from Addis Ababa to
include Lake Tana by 1,100. (Ref. 270) Nubia, in the region between the 1st
and 4th cataracts of the Nile, continued to have two separate kingdoms, one
the Kingdom of Nubia and the other, farther south, the Kingdom of Alwa.
(Ref. 83)

Egypt remained an Arab, Moslem state under the Fatimid Dynasty
throughout this century. As noted in the last chapter, these Shi'ite rulers had
invaded from the west, having first had a base in Tunisia and an army of
Berber tribesmen. They developed Cairo as their capital.

NORTH CENTRAL AND NORTHWESTERN AFRICA

Morocco and Tunisia had a continuing change of emirates and the situation
was complicated by the return of hordes of Spanish Moors, who were being
run out of Spain. When the Berber Zirid Dynasty tried to become
independent of Cairo, the Fatimids sent armies of Bedouin Arabs against
them and they succeeded in devastating the region and its economy. At
about that same time, on an island just off the Moroccan coast, Ibn Yasin,
with some Sahara desert followers, formed a dedicated band and with
thousands of camel men, launched a "jihad"[footnote], driving eastward,
overrunning all western, north Africa (the Mahgrib), some of Ghana and
even part of Spain, establishing the Almoravid Dynasty| footnote]. A

concept of Moroccan unity was born and Marakesh was developed as the
capital of this new ruling group in 1062.

This means a "holy war"

In a newer terminology this is called the Murabit Dynasty. (Ref. 137)

SUBSAHARAN AFRICA

The acme of the Ghana Empire may have occurred in the first half of this
century. The inhabitants were the Negroid Soninke (Sarakole) branch of
Mande-speakers. They dominated well over 100,000 square miles of
territory with an efficient administration and an army of 200,000, including
40,000 bowmen. Their horses had gold trappings and their guard dogs had
gold collars. Al Bakri, writing in 1067, said that the houses were of two
stories, with warehouses on the ground floor and living quarters above. The
Soninke had their own pagan religion, but they allowed Muslims in their
territory. In the second half of the century drought, famine and pillage of the
capital city by the Almoravids (1076) started the empire into decline. The
invading Moslems were helped by non-Moslem Berbers who needed the
salt mines of Ankar. It is probable that the city of Jennejeno, whose
development we have followed in previous chapters, participated in this
decline as it known that its population decreased, despite new commerce
with North Africa. (Ref. 268) As Ghana fell, successor states included
Diara, Soso, two Mossi states and Manding, or Mali, formed by the
Malinke Mande. The ruler of the latter was a Moslem living in the rapidly
growing city of Timbuktu. Subject to Mali was an adjacent empire in the
middle Niger called Songhoy and at about this same time a people called
the "Telem" took over the old abandoned granaries in the caves of the
Bandiagara cliff in Mali and used this as a burial place for their dead. (See
page 234, volume 1). One cave alone has been found to have 3,000
skeletons. (Ref. 251)

By this time most of the desert nomads had been converted to Islam, which
had spread south from the Maghrib into the states of the Sudan with Muslim
merchants as they crossed the Sahara. This dangerous trans-Sahara trade
carried luxury goods, eventually fire-arms and salt, a vital element in the
diet of tropical countries. On the reverse, north trek went gold, leather work

and slaves. (Ref. 8, 45, 211, 83) This was the era when the one-humped
camel (dromedary) really became of greatest importance in the desert.
These hot, dry-country animals could carry 700 to 800 "light pounds". A
caravan of 6,000 camels could carry 2,400 to 3,000 tons or the load of 4 to
6 medium sized sailing ships of that period. (Ref. 260)

Farther east there was the country of Kanem, which had no gold but did a
brisk business of exporting slaves. In this century Kanem accepted Islam
and under Mai Dunama I, the borders of the state were extended northward
across the desert to Fezzan and westward into Hausaland. Dunama is said to
have had 30,000 horsemen, cultural and commercial links with the Middle
East and to have maintained a rest house in Cairo for pilgrims going from
Kanem to Mecca. (Ref. 175, 83)

In the dense rain forest of central Africa, Pygmoid and Bushmanoid hunters
continued to be present and the Bantu-speaking Negroids had already been
migrating down the rivers from the Sudanic belt to that area and were
gradually spreading east and south. The Luba people may have been well
established in the Lake Kisale region of northern Katanga for three
centuries. The Kenya highlands and adjoining northern Tanzania were also
already well populated. The original inhabitants, as previously noted, were
Caucasoids called "Azanians" and by tradition were tall, bearded and red-
skinned. Gradually through the centuries, however, these had been
gradually absorbed by the Nilo-Hamites and the Bantu-speaking Negroids.
The latter were also filtering into the south into the territory of the
Bushmen. Some buildings were erected at Zimbabwe in this century,
beginning the development of another great empire which would flower
some centuries hence. (Ref. 83, 175)

Forward to Africa: A.D. 1101 to 1200

Africa: A.D. 1101 to 1200

AFRICA

Back to Africa: A.D. 1001 to 1100

NORTHEAST AFRICA

This was a period of building in the Lasta Kingdom of Ethiopia, with
imported Egyptian artisans and materials for church construction. One of
the greatest of the Lasta Zagwe kings was Lalibela, who came to power in
1195. Ethiopian records of this era were not kept indefinitely because later
dominant dynasties considered the Zagwe an "usurping" one. (Ref. 270)
The cathedral built about A.D. 700 in Qasr Ibrim, Nubia, was originally
dedicated to the Virgin Mary, but after a raid in 1172-1173 by Shams ed-
Dowla, brother of Saladin, it was converted into a mosque. Its ruins remain
today as a small island in Lake Nasser. (Ref. 271)

The death throes of the Fatimid caliphate came about not by Christian
Crusaders but by the expansion of Nureddin and his Zangid Sultanate from
Syria. Nureddin continued to live at Mosul and let Egypt be ruled by a
Kurdish general, Saladin, who then proceeded to set up his own Ayyubid
Dynasty in 1174. Islam glorified in the integrity and justice of his rule and
even Christendom acknowledged him as a gentleman and scholar, even
though a foe. At his death in 1193 his realm again became divided. (Ref.
137, 83)

NORTH CENTRAL AND NORTHWEST AFRICA

The Norman, Roger of Sicily, annexed the Zirid Emirate of Tunisia about
1153, but as Saladin took over Egypt, a Shi'ite empire was created farther
west by a Berber tribe led by another supposed "Mahdi" and this Almohade
Dynasty[footnote] replaced the Almoravids and gave Barbary its finest

hour. They defeated the remaining Zirids and finally even ran the Normans
from Tunisia. (Ref. 137, 83)
In newer terminology this is the Muwahid Dynasty

SUBSAHARAN AFRICA

The Tellem people continued to flourish in Mali. Men wore robes made of
cotton strips sewn together, with waistbands or leather aprons and cotton
caps. The women wore short fiber aprons, occasionally with the front pulled
back between the legs to fasten to a waistband behind. They had leather
sandals decorated with incised geometric designs, leather bags and knife
sheaths. Personal ornamentation included beads, iron, wood or bronze
pendants, iron and leather bracelets and cylindrical quartz plugs worn in
noses or ears of both sexes.

Ife, a kingdom south of Nok (Nigeria), flourished from 1100 to 1500 and
produced the greatest artistic creations of tropical Africa. Ife bronzes were
cast by the "lost wax" process which is still in use for some purposes today.
(Ref. 175) Timbuktu was a trade center of this century, servicing the
empires of Manding and Songhoy. Great stone buildings were erected in
Great Zimbabwe as the Shona people made it the capital of their powerful
state. (Ref. 8, 35) (Please also see the 15th century C.E. where there is a
summary of several centuries of activity in this part of Africa).

Forward to Africa: A.D. 1201 to 1300
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Africa: A.D. 1201 to 1300

AFRICA

Back to Africa: A.D. 1101 to 1200

NORTHEAST AFRICA

In the highlands of Ethiopia there were several Muslim sultanates. In Lasta,
King Labibela, who gave his name to the capital city, is credited with 11
monumental rock-cut churches. Egyptian Coptic refugees were allegedly
welcome here, as Labibela attempted to establish a "new Jerusalem".
Juniper trees were planted (in place of cedars), a local stream was named
the "Jordan River" and a grove of olives became the "Mount of Olives".
(Ref. 270) Nearer the coast this rejuvenated dynasty line from the old
Axumite kings gave way in 1270 to a new family claiming to be a
restoration of the old Solomon line, calling themselves the Solomonid
Dynasty. These Amharic-speaking people developed a true Ethiopian
culture and came in conflict with the Muslim coastal states on the Horn of
Africa, notably Adal. The Solomonid ruler became known as the "King of
Kings" and had many vassal kings under him. Christianity in this area then
began to absorb many Judaic and pagan practices from the mixed peoples
living there. (Ref. 43, 8, 83)

Nubia was invaded by Sultan Baibars of Egypt in the middle of the century
and a puppet ruler was set up and tribute paid to the Mamluks.

The descendant of the Kurd, Saladin, ruled Egypt in the first third of this
century and one of the greatest achievements of the time was the building of
the Mansur Hospital in Cairo, a very large institution which had separate
wards for different diseases such as fevers, eye problems, female disorders,
etc. Ruling the country in about 1238, Sultan al-Salih, to augment his
Turkoman army, purchased white slaves from the Mongols as they crossed
southern Russia. These slaves were mixtures of Cumans, Circassians and
Alans and they became the most powerful cavalry unit in the Egyptian army
and were known as mamluks from the Arabic verb "to own". The practice

of taking such men as royal bodyguards had been started by the caliphs of
Baghdad, who could not trust even their own relatives. The last Egyptian
sultan of the Kurd Ayyubin line died in 1249 and after a few murders, one
of the white slave Mamluks named Aybak married Queen Shajar al-Durr,
founded the Burji Dynasty and became the first Mamluk sultan of Egypt.
After seven years Aybak made the mistake of trying to add a new wife, the
daughter of the ruler of Mosul, Iraq. Queen Shajar al-Durr murdered him in
his bath, but she, in turn, received the same type of death three days later
from Aybak's loyal concubines. (Ref. 125, 5)

The Mamluk General Baibars (also Baybars) led an army through Palestine,
thwarting the last of the Crusaders, and then went on to defeat his former
captors in a great battle at Ain Jalut in 1260 and the Mongol advance was
stopped. As a result of these victories Baibars was elevated to be sultan and
he proceeded to be one of the most cruel, ambitious and yet able of the
Mamluks. He traded ambassadors with the Mongol Berke in Russia and
persuaded him to wage war against fellow Mongol Hulegu in the Middle
East, thus pinching the latter's forces between them. He brought the last
Abbasid caliph to Cairo from the destroyed Baghdad, set him up as a
puppet and then proceeded to form a strong administration, reconstruct
fortresses, roads, bridges and canals, although late in the century the old
Necho canal from the Nile to Red Sea was filled in. He had a regular postal
service between Egypt and his domains in Syria. At the height of his career,
in 1277, he was poisoned. With the subsequent reign of Qalawun (1279-
1290) the Bahri[footnote] Mamluk Empire reached its height and the
prosperity continued with his family successors until the middle of the next
century. It was a period of a full treasury and resulting commissioning of
great works of art, both secular and religious, including great palaces and
mosques, manuscripts, glass vessels inlaid with gold and other treasures.
(Ref. 137, 5)

"Bahri" means the "sea" and was the name given to the Mamluks who were
stationed on the Island of Roda in the Nile by the last Kurd Sultan, Najm al-
Din Ayyub. (Ref. 5)

NORTH CENTRAL AND NORTHWEST AFRICA

All of north Africa had changes of regimes during this century. When the
Baghdad Caliphate was destroyed by the Mongols, the Hafsid Dynasty took
the title of calph in Africa in A.D. 1259 and assumed control of Tunisia and
some of Morocco. In the latter area the Almohades were in collapse because
of their losses in Spain to the Christians, and they were displaced by the
Marinid Sultan of Fez in 1269. Both Fez and Marraqesh were great
Moroccon cities, exceeded in population by very few European cities of
that time.

Algeria was taken over by still another dynasty, the Zujanids. All of these
north African states contributed to trans-Saharan trade and the crossing of
the great desert by these medieval Arab merchants was a tremendous
undertaking. Caravans could cover 200 miles in a week but were subject to
black-veiled Taureg pirates and if wells and oases failed, men and beasts
alike could perish. (Ref. 175, 137, 83)

The area was not devoid of intellectual activity. Hasan published tables of
sines for each degree and Nasir ud Din wrote a treatise on trigonometry. In
addition the whole science of botany was revised by these Arab-Berbers.

SUBSAHARAN AFRICA

In western Africa in the great bend of the Niger River, several states vied
for supremacy. At the beginning of the century, Sumanguru, greatest of the
rulers of Soso, next to the Mossi states, plundered the old capital of Ghana,
Kumbi, and in 1224 conquered and annexed Manding. This situation was
reversed 11 years later, however, when the Mandingos defeated the ruler of
Soso and re-established independence, in a decisive battle of Kirina. This
cleared the way for the creation of Mali as a successor state to Ghana and it
became the second great empire of the western Sudan, extending from the
Lower Gambia and Senegal rivers to the Niger-Benue junction. In contrast
to the Ghana homeland, which was in a semi-arid sahil, the Mali center was
in a fertile agricultural land a little to the south and they even had better
access to gold. Sundiata was the warrior hero of these conquering Malinke
Mandingos. Exactly where the recently excavated city of Jennejeno fits into
this new empire is not clear, but it is known that this ancient city was

already starting to decline in this century. The Tellem territory near the
Bandigara cliff at the bend of the Niger apparently was never governed
politically by the Mali and evidently offered refuge.

In Ife, Nigeria, superb sculptured heads reached a peak production in this
and the next century. It was the holy city of the Yoruba tribe and home of its
priest-king, the Oni. Some of the sculptures are believed to represent former
Onis. (Ref. 45, 175, 119, 83)

In the region of the southern Congo was the Lunda-Luba Empire. The
trading states on the east coast were in a golden age with the Indian Ocean
becoming a vast Muslim lake. From Somalia in the north to Mozambique in
the south, dozens of coastal states flourished with between 30 and 40
medieval city-states, many on islands adjacent to the coast. Kilwa, on the
coast of southern Tanzania, was the greatest medieval east African city,
with caravans arriving there with ivory from around Lake Malawi and
dhows coming up the coast from the south with gold, much of which came
from Zimbabwe. From Kilwa great oceangoing ships took off for Arabia,
India and China on the monsoon winds. (Ref. 175) Although the ruling
dynasties of those eastern states were Muslim, the populations were mixed
Arabs, Persians, and indigenous Bantu. This resulted, in time, in the
distinctive east African Swahili Culture. The political control extended only
a few miles inland and the interior peoples, themselves, brought the wealth
of east and central Africa to the shores of the Indian Ocean. Slaves with
tusks on their heads plodded for hundreds of miles to the coast and then
were sold with the ivory. (Ref. 68)

Slightly inland and going from north to south, we should mention the rise of
the Bantu kingdoms, especially Bunyoro, the largest at that time, in the area
of present day Uganda. (Ref. 175) Farther south, in the Great Lakes area the
cattle herding Cwezi kings held sway. (Please see also the summary after
the section on AFRICA, in the 15th century chapter). Continuing south, the
leading state of central Africa was governed by Mwana Mtapa and covered
a 700 mile stretch of the Zambesi Valley.

Mtapa was also the heir to an even older Shona Dynasty which had built the
fortress of Zimbabwe, the ruins of which still stand today. The Shonas
formed loose federations to control gold mining regions and trade routes to

the coast. There is some evidence, however, of a burning of the original
Great Zimbabwe dwellings in this century. (Ref. 35, 8)

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Africa: A.D. 1301 to 1400

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NORTHEAST AFRICA

The Somali have been documented as being in the Horn of Africa in this
14th century but they may have actually arrived much earlier. Although
commentary and archaeological material is meagre, it is probable that the
homeland of these Somali, as well as the Galla, Danakil and Sidama lies in
the Rift Valley of southern Ethiopia. They were all speakers of eastern
Cushitic languages and for all life was hard, with frequent bloody feuds
adding to their troubles. The Solomonids from Shoa continued their
civilization in Ethiopia, with Emperor Amda Siyon (A.D. 1314-44)
expanding toward the south and then defeating the Muslims of eastern
Ethiopia in A.D. 1332. A reformed monastic movement evangelized
frontier districts and churches were built on mountain tops. (Ref. 83, 270)

The real power in northeast Africa, of course, was Egypt, where the
Mamluk Dynasty continued to reign with relative stability and with
increased aggressiveness as they even conquered Armenia in 1375. Cairo
was the greatest city and its minor art, enameled glass and pottery work was
exceptionally fine. One of the greatest Bahri Mamluk patrons of the arts
was Sultan Hasan (1347-51 and 1354-61), who is remembered for his
school and mausoleum which was decorated with carved stone and stucco,
marble revetments, inlaid metal doors and gilded glass lamps. His
successor, Shaban II, commissioned fabulously illuminated Korans, some in
blocks three feet high. Each Mamluk sultan was always surrounded by a
group of Amirs, also former slave Mamluks, and these in turn, also always
had a new group of slave Mamluk bodyguards. The latter could earn their
freedom and when they did, they were sent as governors and commanders
to various provinces and given land for themselves. (Ref. 5) Cannons were
in use in Cairo and Alexandria in the latter half of the century. Ibn Batuta,

travelling to Cairo, described 12,000 water carriers and thousands of camel
drivers plying for hire[ footnote].
As noted by Braudel (Ref. 260), page 481

In this 14th century the majority of Egyptians, for the first time, were Arab-
speaking Muslims and this must have resulted from many intermatriages
with Bedouin Arabs. It is possible that the Black Death among the original
native population may also have-been a factor in this ethnic shift, as about
1/3 of the inhabitants died in the first attack of that plague between 1347
and 1349. (Ref. 140)

In 1381 Malik al-Nasir Barquq, an amir of the Burji Mamluks, overthrew
the east Bahri sultan and started a new dynasty, the Burji, dedicated to
luxury and intrigue and violence, which soon led to social decay. This
administration debased the coinage, taxed necessities and laid such heavy
duty on India-European trade that Europe had to find a new route to India in
the next century.

NORTH CENTRAL AND NORTHWEST AFRICA

A creditable civilization remained in North Africa, although between the
Marinids of Morocco and the Hafsids of Tunisia there was endless strife,
particularly as to who should receive the homage of the intervening
Ziyanids of Algeria. In 1360 the latter became independent and the Hafsid
dominion divided into the Hafsid Emirate of Constantine and the plain
Hafsid Caliphate, running to the east along the coast as far as Egypt. The
Marinids of Morocco flourished as much from piracy as through commerce.
(Ref. 137, 119)

At Timbuktu, far south across the great desert, there was a library of some
1,600 volumes, a famous university and beautiful mosques. The geographer
Muhammad abu Abdullah ibn Batuta, after traveling about 75,000 miles,
wrote a book about this area and Abd-er-Rahman of Tunis, perhaps the
greatest historian of all time, wrote many treatises on the rise and fall of
civilizations in general, anticipating and stimulating Arnold Toynbee in
many respects. At the end of this 14th century repeated nomad conquerors

from the fringes of the Sahara began raids into North Africa, starting a
period of decadence.

SUBSAHARAN AFRICA

While Europe suffered the Black Death and the Hundred Years War, black
kingdoms of the Sudan were flourishing with great wealth and brilliant
artistic accomplishments. Competing with the one at Timbuktu, a university
at Jenne attracted students from far and wide. (Ref. 8) The Muslims of Mali
had "-a greater abhorrence of injustice than any other people", said Ibn
Battuta[footnote] The Mali emperor, Musa I, made a pilgrimage to Mecca,
taking with him a great train of servants, courtiers, slaves and 3,800
kilograms of gold, sufficient to depress the price of that metal on the Cairo
exchange. But about 1350, the expanding Empire of Songhai began to take
over Mali territory, continuing to support their city of Timbuktu, but
creating a new capital at nearby Gao. Between Songhai and Kanem-Bornu
were the Hausa city-states. Of these, Kano and Katsina particularly were
rich and industrious, with a specialty production of leather goods which was
called "Moroccan" leather in England. If continued in the present region of
Nigeria. On the Gulf of Guinea several kingdoms arose in the area now
known as Ghana. The Yoruba people, who settled the tropical rain forest of
the Niger Basin, built up powerful kingdoms of Benin and Oyo. (Ref. 175)
As quoted in Reference 154 by the National Geographic Society,
Cartographic Division

Many wealthy city-states appeared on the east coast of Africa in this and the
next century. The city of Zimbabwe has been mentioned previously and this
remained a very important religious, political and trading center of the
Shona, a Bantu-speaking people among which building and pottery styles
reached a peak in this and the 15th centuries. Stone walling was improved,
the old burned out stone buildings were rebuilt and an attractive edifice 800
feet long and 32 feet high was constructed for some unknown purpose.
(Ref. 88) The Shona are still today the majority people of that country.

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Africa: A.D. 1401 to 1500

AFRICA

Back to Africa: A.D. 1301 to 1400

NORTHEAST AFRICA

This part of the world experienced no great change from the previous
century. The Solomonid Dynasty in Ethiopia was at the height of its power
and Amhara colonists continued to invade southern Shoa, Gojam and the
base of the Semien Mountains. The Moslems controlled all the Red Sea
coast, however, and confined the Christians to the Ethiopian highlands.
Even Nubia became Moslem. The Caucasoid Azanians in the northeastern
interior felt the impact of migrating Bantu speakers and the arrival of Nilo
Hamites with their Cushitic languages, such as Galla, influenced the region.
These Nilo-Hamites appear to have been a mixture from three origins, -
Nilotic Negroids of the upper Nile, Cushitic Sidama of Ethiopia and a third
of origin unknown. (Ref. 83)

The Mamluk Dynasty continued in Egypt, but with declining power and
influence.

It must be recalled that this ruling group were originally warriors from the
Caucasus region and this communication with Black Sea ports allowed
recurrent epidemic disasters in Egypt. Disease, helped probably by
oppression and bad government, resulted in depopulation and
impoverishment. The last great Mamluk sultan was Qaitbay (1468-96), an
avid builder, who restored some of the greatness of the old Bahri period of
the 13th century, but the decline of the empire was only temporarily halted.
(Ref. 140, 5)

NORTH CENTRAL AND NORTHWEST AFRICA

The coast still had a high cultural level and now acted as a refuge for the
Moors fleeing from the persecutions in Spain. With the decline of the
Moroccan Marinids and after the Portuguese seized Ceuta, opposite from
Gibralter in 1415, the Hafsids gained at least titular supremacy over all of
western North Africa for while. By 1478 the Wattasid Sultanate developed
in the far west and the Ziyanid Emir existed between the Wattasid and the
slipping Hafsids. (Ref. 137, 83) By the end of the century, the Arabs had
established sugar cane in the Moroccan Sousse and from there it soon
spread on into the Atlantic to Madeira, the Canaries and the Azores.

SUBSAHARAN AFRICA

Just southwest of the Sahara it was the heyday of the Songhai, who had
great mosques at Timbuktu and Jenne and were famous for their piety and
scholarship. Relationships of this particular empire with Morocco were not
cordial because of competition for the trans-Saharan trade and the valuable
salt mine of Taghaxa in the northern desert. This Songhai Empire came into
its zenith about 1464, when a warrior king, the Sonni Ali, came to the
throne of Gao in the middle Niger and by his death had extended his rule
over the whole western Sudan. He had cavalry, levies of foot soldiers and
flotillas of war canoes, which patrolled the 1,000 miles of the navigable
Niger. It was he who ended the Mali Empire of Ghana. (Ref. 83)

In the forest area of west Africa were the Edo, who developed great bronze
sculpture in the Kingdom of Benin, near the coast of Nigeria. Benin was a
walled city, 25 miles around, with wide, straight streets and spacious houses
of wood. In Ife, in southwest Nigeria, one of these bronze heads was
definitely made by the lost wax technique. Seven Hausa city-states,
including Kano, Zaria, Gobir and Katsina had become flourishing
commercial centers in the Sudan. Agriculture was the basis of society, with
trade routes through the Sahara. Guinea, existing out on the southwest
comer of the bulge of west Africa, would, at first glance, appear to be a site
early exploited by Europeans, but actually it remained isolated for a long
time because European ships could not return from there directly up the
west African coast. Because of the Atlantic currents and wind, they had to
go straight out to the middle Atlantic before they could turn and go north

again. The people of Guinea were modest farmers and fishermen, with
some local trade involving salt and dried fish. Deeper inland, they had some
contact with the Sudan. This small country has a rain forest, but it is not
deep and is traversed by the magnificent waterway, the Niger. Near the end
of the century the Portugese did arrive to establish a trading post. A little to
the east, the foundations had been laid for the famous forest states of Oyo
and Akan, as well as Benin, which we have described above. (Ref. 206, 17,
83, 8) The Sudan had gold mines, ruled by village chiefs and the workers
approached the condition of slavery. (Ref. 292)

In central Africa gold was plentiful and the king of the Congo maintained
such opulence in his capital that visiting Portuguese were amazed and made
haste to make an alliance, not a conquest. About 1441 they brought
Christianity to western, central Africa, going even 200 miles up the Congo
to convert the Congo king. Incidentally, they brought back gold. (Ref. 175)
Living in the great bend of the Congo, in the plateau north of Stanley Pool,
were the Teke people in a number of chiefdoms collectively known as
Mongo. (Ref. 83)

Farther east in the lake country between Tanzania and Zaire there appeared
in this 15th century the Batutsi, a tall, warrior people, perhaps originally
from Ethiopia. They invaded and subjugated the native Bahutu in Burundi.
In Kenya, the nomadic Masai entered from the north, joining the Kikuyu
already there and then some Luo entered from the west. The Kikuyu were
Bantu-speakers and related groups established themselves in parts of the
Transvaal and Natal as well as the lower Congo and Zambezi by about A.D.
1500. Kitari was an Hamitic kingdom north of Lake Victoria. (Ref. 175, 83)

In the meantime Muslim Swahili[footnote] city-states had been established
all down the eastern coast of Africa and there was special interest in the
gold of the Zimbabwe (Rhodesia) region. The Bantu-speakers had migrated
southward along the spine of east Africa with a new war-like ethos and a
pastoral life, dominating other tribes and reaching the Zambesi River by the
end of the century. Arab trade inland actually declined, because these Bantu
were less amenable to exploitation than their predecessors, chiefly
Bushmen. By 1440 King Mutota of the Rozur clan in the Katanga nation
assembled an army which completely dominated the Rhodesian plateau

within 10 years. This period has been described by Charles Colt, Jr. (Ref.
35) as a splitting of the Shona state into two rival kingdoms. At any rate, as
ruler of an empire, Mutota than took the title of Mwene Mutapa[footnote].
The Portuguese wrote this as Monomotapa, which soon became the name of
the empire, itself. The stone birds, which have been found in the ruins of
old Zimbabwe, were probably important in the religious ritual of that
theocratic empire. The realm was soon subject to revolution and succession
wars and this resulted in many "ups and downs" in its history and in its
buildings. From the beginning in 1440 on for 400 years, however, there was
a progressive evolution of artistic and technical skills in that society. The
Monomatapa ruler was considered divine and his subjects would hear him
but not look at him and had to approach him on their stomachs. He lived
amid great pomp, but when he became seriously ill or very old he was
obliged to take poison. At the end of the 15th century the entire nation
moved hundreds of miles north, apparently because the local salt supplies
of Great Zimbabwe had been exhausted. Their extensive stone buildings,

"Swahili" implies "Arab and Negro”. (Ref. 83)
In the Shona language, "Mwene Mutapa" means "Master Pillager". (Ref.
176)

Explorer Diogo Cao claimed Angola for Portugal in 1483 and the slave
trade was opened up in earnest. In the next four centuries, some 3,000,000
slaves were sent to Brazil by the Portuguese. At the very tip of South Africa
the people seen when the Europeans first explored the area were the
Bushmen, who were hunters and gatherers, and the Hottentots (Khoikhoi),
who herded sheep and cattle along the coastal regions. As noted previously,
these were not Bantu-speaking people. (Ref. 175)

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Africa: A.D. 1501 to 1600

AFRICA

Back to Africa: A.D. 1401 to 1500

NORTHEAST AFRICA

The horn of Africa now became the site of bitter conflict, originally a
trading rivalry, but soon a long religious and political fight between
Christians of Ethiopia and the Muslim coastal states. The sultan of Adal
(now between Somalia and Ethiopia), Ahmad Gran, attacked into the
heartland of Ethiopia in the 1520s with the help of Danakill and Somali
nomads. The Christian Amhara nation dominated the Ethiopian plateau at
that time and sustained a flourishing ecclesiastical art. (Ref. 8, 270) The
pope sent Portuguese soldiers, led by Christopher da Gama (Vasco's son), to
help against this Muslim conquest in a 20 year long war. As a result of that
help by Portuguese, Ethiopia came under Catholic influence for the first
time, as their own Coptic Church had been declared heretical some 1,100
years previously. The Jesuits with the Portuguese tried to convert the
Ethiopians, apparently without too much success, as all Catholic missions
were expelled by the next century. But the old Christian empire was so
exhausted by the warfare that the pagan Galla, from the south and east then
invaded and settled in the country, with general anarchy resulting. (Ref.
175, 8, 83) Additional Notes

In what is now the country of Sudan, the Funj people appeared early in this
century, defeated the Arabs and established a powerful kingdom around the
capital Sennar, on the Blue Nile. The people, known as the "Black Sultans"
of eastern Sudan eventually adopted Islam. (Ref. 83)

In Egypt the last Mamluk sultan was Qansuh al-Ghuri, a scholarly man
coming to the throne late in life. Decadence, rivalry and corruption
continued in his regime. To add to the Mamluk troubles, their trading ports
were now by-passed by the Portuguese trade- routes around the Cape of
Good Hope and the Egyptian treasury was soon empty. The stage was set

for the advance of the Ottoman Turk, Selim I, who defeated the Mamluk
army in Syria and advanced to rule Egypt and Hejaz (Saudi Arabia). (Ref.
2)

NORTH CENTRAL AND NORTHWEST AFRICA

Estimates of the population of North Africa in this century vary from
2,000,000 to 3,500,000. (Ref. 260) After da Gama's voyage around Africa
at the end of the preceding century, the economic ascendancy of North
Africa ended. Science and philosophy lost out to both Christianity and
Islam and the area began to decline to the status we know today. In the early
century, both Spain and Portugal gained control of some Moroccan ports,
but in a great battle of Alcazarquivir in 1578, King Sebastian of Portugal
was killed and the Moroccans preserved their independence for another half
century, usually ruled by factions of the Sharifian Dynasty. (Ref. 175) That
country, alone of the north African states, remained independent of the
Ottomans. At the height of its power, in about 1590, Morocco invaded the
Songhai Empire and set up a client state in the sudan, disrupting the
economy of that entire region. (Ref. 8) Throughout the century local fairs
were set up in connection with local saints and pilgrimages. One of the
largest was among the Gouzzoula, south of the Anti-Atlas, looking out over
the desert. It survived for hundreds of years. (Ref. 292)

East of Morocco in the Oran-Algiers-Tripoli area a band of pirates roved
until captured by Spanish forces using artillery in 1509 and 1510. Then in
1,516 a colorful buccaneer entered the picture - one Khair ed-Kin Khizr,
called "Barbarossa" because of his red hair. Actually he was a Greek, who
had joined the pirates, conquering Tripoli, Tunisia and Algeria and he then
offered the Ottoman, Selim I, sovereignty over the area in return for the use
of a Turkish army. With the latter he became the hero of western Islam, by
ferrying 70,000 Moors from Spain to Africa, raiding Sicily and Italy,
landing at Naples and then, with the French fleet, taking Nice and
Villefranche from the Holy Roman Emperor. After all this, he died in bed at
age 80 years. The Algiers and Oran area continued to be the haunt of the
Barbary pirates until the end of the 18th century. (Ref. 175, 260)

In the meantime, however, Charles I of Spain (later Emperor Charles V)
had re-captured Tunis as part of his war with Turkey, and had installed a
puppet ruler. But the Ottomans, with Barbarossa's help, continued to creep
across north Africa and gradually once again took over the entire area, with
the exception of a few Spanish ports and the Sultanates of Fez and
Morocco. In 1,571 the Turkish sea power was broken in a great sea battle
off Lepanto, by a combined Spanish- Venetian navy. (Ref. 8)

SUBSAHARAN AFRICA

Horses have never been used much in Africa. For one thing the animals do
not thrive in the tropics and secondly, they remained exceptionally
expensive. In this 16th century horses cost three times as much as slaves in
central Africa, although in the sudan the great Moroccan horses were
sometimes worth 12 slaves each. (Ref. 260) The huge Songhai Empire,
which had been built up by Sunni Ali in the last century, was led early in
this century by an even greater man, Askia Muhammad, the Great (1493-
1528). There were a number of large commercial cities, such as the old
Mali capital of Timbuktu, a town of 6,000 houses with a splendid royal
court. The city was multi-racial, with Songhai, Taureg, Moor, Malenki and
Fulani, a fact which led to hostility and succession problems in the empire.
The predominantly Negro inhabitants were described as superior in wit,
civility and industry. Other cities were Jenne and Gao, the latter full of rich
merchants. But each century the Sahara was becoming more and more
desiccated and life a little harder. To further complicate matters, in 1590 the
Sultan of Morocco sent an army of 3,000 men, including Spanish and
Portuguese renegades straight south across the desert to wipe out Songhai.
Their cannons and muskets won the towns quickly, but in the south where
the terrain did not favor open warfare, they could not win, although the war
went on for a decade, devastating the country-side and bringing down the
empire. Learning, culture and prosperity all disappeared from the region.
(Ref. 175, 154, 222, 83) Apparently isolated from the rest of Mali, a people
called "Dogon” arrived in the Bondagara cliff region to gradually replace
the Tellem, who had lived in the area since the 11th century. The latter had
been decreasing in nu mber since the 13th century, however, perhaps
because of pressure from the Mali and later the Songhai empires. The

Dogon lived in this isolated region, more or less unknown to the western
world until about 1907. (Ref. 251)

Farther south in Nigeria, the Bini tribe of Benin made magnificent bronzes,
using the "lost wax" method and did beautiful ivory carvings for the royal
palaces. Ife remained, related to Benin. About Lake Chad it was the apogee
of the Empire of Kanem, or Bornu, under Idres III. In the Great Lakes
region, Lwo invaders from the north overthrew the Cwezi kings and
established the states of Bunyoro and Buganda.. In Uganda the Kingdom of
Buchwezi continued. The Watutsi, probably originating in Ethiopia,
migrated in the late 16th century to the Lake Kiva region, establishing the
Rwanda and Burundi kingdoms. The Kikuya reached Kenya from the south,
cut down the forest and started to cultivate the land. (Ref. 83) Farther south,
in what later was to become Rhodesia and is now again Zimbabwe, the king
of Monomatapa left the original Zimbabwe region to establish a new capital
on the northern edge of the Rhodesian plateau. A new dynasty, the Rosvis,
soon revived the original area and some of the largest Zimbabwe buildings
were then constructed. (Ref. 19, 38, 175) As the Bantu speakers pushed
southward, four main linguistic groups developed. The Nguni group took
on many "clicks" of the Khoisan tongue of the Bushmen, as the latter were
pushed westward and toward the cape. (Ref. 83)

The Portuguese were the first European power to make some inroad into
Subsaharan Africa. After having taken Sofala and Kil-wa and founding
Mozambique between 1505 and 1507 they ascended the Zambesi River in
1513. And they were not hesitant about taking slaves from the Atlantic side
of the continent. In the Congo in about 1526 the Christian King Affonso
deplored the depopulation of his country by slavers who were chiefly
Portuguese. Inadvertently, these Europeans did Africa another great
disfavor by bringing maize from America. That maize grew so rapidly that
it led to a great population increase in some areas, so that slave ships never
sailed empty. A terrible side effect, however, was the appearance of the
nutritional disease, pellagra, which resulted from the exclusive diet of
maize, when not supplemented with other foods or prepared with lime
water. In the Central and South American homelands of that vegetable,
people not only converted the corn to hominy with lime water, but ate

tomatoes, capsicum, peppers and fish, which supplied the vitamins
necessary to prevent pellagra. (Ref. 154, 211)

Sir John Hawkins initiated the British slave trade and the Dutch established
their first colony on the Guinea coast in 1595. To evaluate the early effect
of the slave trade one must realize that in the early years African monarchs
profited from the trade, obtaining weapons, cloth, metal and spirits, which
increased their wealth. The loss of population of about 40,000 a year was
generally economically acceptable and in this respect only, the less
populous Angola and East Africa suffered. The larger kingdoms of Ashanti
and Dahomey might owe their rise to power to the fire-arms acquired in the
slave trade. (Ref. 213)

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Note:The southern farmlands of Ethiopia, in the region of Bale, was
occupied by Oromos, most of whom were Moslems

Africa: A.D. 1601 to 1700

AFRICA

Back to Africa: A.D. 1501 to 1600

NORTHEAST AFRICA

In the early century, Ethiopian emperors began to reconsolidate their power
among the plains and lush hillsides of Begemder and developed a
permanent royal residence at Gondar, after 1636. Emperor Fasilida expelled
all Jesuits by 1633, put down the Moslems of Adal, and closed the country
to foreigners. Later local wars against both the neighboring Muslims and
the Galla, farming people of central and south Ethiopia, resumed and was to
last almost two centuries. Galla groups continued to move in Somali, some
intermarrying with Arabs and developing a passionate devotion to Islam.
Cubes of salt served as both money and food for these people. In Egypt,
Turkish control continued. (Ref. 83, 260)

NORTH CENTRAL AND NORTHWEST AFRICA

This area continued to decline economically and intellectually, Ali Bey
made himself hereditary Bey of Tunis, while Algiers and Tripoli became
virtually independent states. Politics was violent, with riots, plots, counter-
plots, and massacres. 30,000 of Algiers’ 130,000 people were Christian
slaves of the dominant Moslems. The Barbary pirates continued to work the
Algiers and Oran areas throughout this century, using renegade Europeans
from Calabria or Sicily, as captains. (Ref. 83)

SUBSAHARAN AFRICA

In the western bulge of Africa the state of Ashanti was formed and rapidly
expanded to absorb some 30 independent neighboring kingdoms in the area
that is now part of western Ghana. It was the Ashanti who teamed up with
the European slavers for the greatest exports of men. Between the Ashanti
and the Niger delta the states of Dahomey and Oyo were also established in
this century and the entire region was sometimes called “the slave coast”.
Later some of it was called “the gold coast”. The Portuguese had refused to
sell firearms to any of these people, but in the middle of the century the
Dutch did. On the upper Niger, the black Bambara Kingdom defeated and
replaced the old Manding empire about 1670. Brought from America,
maize gradually came to be the primary food plant north of the Congo in
Benin and among the Yoruba. (Ref. 58, 83, 260)

Bornu continued as the most powerful state of the central Sudan, but
interstate wars continued in this and the next century. Kuba was a group of
chiefdoms at the south edge of the rain forest which developed a relatively
high standard of living and rapid population increase as they received new
American crops and techniques, both brought by the Portuguese. The
Buchwezi Kingdom in Uganda was succeeded by the Buganda and this had
become the most powerful of the Bantu-speaking kingdoms by 1700. Those
people carved wooden sculptures and had very artistic palaces, shrines, and
houses. Large drums, some 12 feet across, were used as ritual objects,
supposedly to communicate with ancestors. (Ref. 175)

Portuguese domination of Swahili cities of the east coast was eliminated by
the Arabs of Oman, who had considerable maritime power at that time. A
1690 revolt in Mozambique, led by Changamire, to protest against harsh
Portuguese treatment, resulted in the elimination of Europeans there, but
they still bought slaves through other ports. (Ref. 83)

In parts of southern Africa, Bushmen still made rock-paintings and
engravings of polychrome animals which could compare favorably with any
stone-age art of the Sahara or even of western Europe. The best paintings of
this and the next two centuries are in the Drakenburg Mountains. (Ref. 88)
In 1652 the Dutch East India Company established a rest station near the
cape at the tip of Africa, en route to the Spice Islands (Indonesia). Soon
slaves were imported for local labor and the local Hottentots supplied beef.

Several hundred French Huguenots arrived as settlers also by 1700 so that
by the time there was a mixture of about 1000 Dutchmen with some French
and the native Hottentots and Bushmen. Neither of the latter are correctly
considered to be truly of the Negro race and the Bantu-speaking, true
Negroes were still in the process of migrating slowly down the eastern coast
of the continent, although the Nguni were beginning to settle over most of
Natal. (Ref. 83)

Although the Europeans were establishing trading posts along the coast of
Africa, the mainland of the continent remained self-contained and there
were no true European colonies until the end of the next century. Probably
the chief reason for the slow penetration up the rivers by Caucasians is that
most of tropical Africa’s rivers are blocked by huge waterfalls only a short
distance from the rivers’ mouths. There was some traveling up the Senegal
and the Gambiae. As the sugar, cotton, and tobacco plantations developed
in the New World, the slave trade from Africa reached substantial
proportions. Initially handled by the Portuguese, the trade was progressively
taken over by British, Dutch, and French. In 4 % centuries some 10 million
slaves were brought to the Americas and this slave trade inhibited political,
economic, and social development and culled out the sound and healthy
population already debilitated by endemic disease. (ref. 68) Early on the
Portuguese had a trading station in Angola, but for a while the Dutch took
this away, depriving the Portuguese for slaves for the Brazilian plantations.
By 1640, then independent of Spain, Portugal recovered Angola and some
14 years later even drove the Dutch out of Brazil as well. The French
started some settlements on Madagascar in 1626 and intermarried with
various primitive tribes and the Hovas, who had arrived from across the
Indian Ocean about 1000 A.D. They were the most advanced of several
peoples of Malay and Melanesian stocks, all speaking one language, but
with many dialects.

Forward to Africa: A.D. 1701 to 1800
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3. Central and Northern Asia

4, Europe

5. The Far East

6. The Indian Subcontinent
7. The Near East

8. Pacific

Africa: A.D. 1701 to 1800

AFRICA

Back to Africa: A.D. 1601 to 1700

NORTHEAST AFRICA

Local war continued in Ethiopia. James Bruce, exploring that country as he
traveled from Massawa to Gondar and thence to the Blue Nile, reported that
the Ethiopian Empire was in decline, restricted to the area north of the Blue
Nile and was wracked by rebellion. Galla tribesmen had penetrated the
countryside and looted at will. (Ref. 270) Egypt was simply a part of the
Ottoman Empire until the very end of the century, when Napoleon
penetrated it as a gateway to the east (1798). The population had shrunk
from about 8,000,000 in the 1st century C.E. to 2,000,000 at this time. (Ref.
68) Additional Notes

NORTH CENTRAL AND NORTHWEST AFRICA

Hussein ibn Ali founded the Husseinite Dynasty in Tunis and threw off
Turkish authority in 1705 and shortly thereafter Ahmed Bey made himself
ruler of Tripoli, founding the Karamanil Dynasty, which was to last more
than a century. The Spaniards were expelled from Oran for awhile, but they
resumed control in 1732. From 1757 to 1789 Morocco was ruled by Sidi
Mohammed, who established a regime of law and order and abolished
Christian slavery. By 1800 those north African areas still subject to
Ottoman Sultans were the most powerful communities controlled by
outsiders on the continent. (Ref. 119, 83)

Copper bracelets, gold dust and horses were all used as currency in that part
of Africa. Magnificient horses of the Moors were sold for 15 slaves each. In
more southern areas a sheet of paper would obtain a fat, tender chicken.
(Ref. 260)

SUBSAHARAN AFRICA

In western Africa, local wars in Ghana finally allowed that state to be taken
over by Ashanti warriors, whose king and major chief s wore regalia made
of local gold and imported silver. This forest Akan Empire became supreme
in the interior of that part of Africa, trading gold for European fire-arms.
They used minature brass sculptures to measure their gold dust. (Ref. 19,
175) The west coast of Africa was also the source of slaves for the British
slave trade to the Spanish colonies in America. Britain had obtained this
right as part of the treaty ending the Spanish War of Succession. The Ibo, in
Guinea, supplied a greater number of slaves than any other e-thnic group,
but their internal state was very little disturbed. Late in the century (1787)
Sierra Leone, on the west coast, was acquired by the British for the
settlement of freed slaves and it was made a separate colony in 1799, the
same year as the founding of the British Church Missionary Society. Also
late in this period, at about 1776, there was a rise of the Tukulor power in
west Africa on the upper Niger, pushing the French out of their Senegal
possessions on the river of the same name. The French recovered these in
1778.

Farther east the Hausa continued as a power about Lake Chad. Oyo, south
of the Hausa states, got horses from the latter and built up a large cavalry.
They may have had as many as 6,000 towns and villages, with almost all of
the population speaking the Yoruba tongue. Still farther east, about the
Great Lakes, the lake kingdoms of Uganda and Buganda made contact with
the outside world, particularly through the Arab and Swahili merchants on
the east coast. The Arabs had settled the coastal area of Kenya and came
under control of the Sultan of Zanzibar from 1740 on. (Ref. 83, 175)

In the equatorial area, 600 miles northeast of the Kuba Kingdom, were
several states of warrior Zande stock and east of them were the Mangbetu
who, although cannibals, had advanced metal work displayed in lavish
treasure chambers. The origin of these people is unknown. On the southern
savannahs the Bakuba of Zaire commemorated their king with many fine
portrait statues and in the more isolated regions, the Bushmen continued
rock paintings. In the Cape Colony, the Dutch gradually pushed inland as
cattle raiders and farmers, reaching the Orange River in 1760 and the Great

Fish River in 1776. In 1795 the British fleet, acting under mandate from the
exiled Prince of Orange, captured the Dutch garrison, primarily to prevent
the Cape Colony from falling into the hands of the French. We should note,
in passing, that the end of the century marked the birth of Shaka, a great
Bantu-speaking king who would eventually fuse the Zulu nations into a
great war machine. The Bushmen of the Cape were essentially destroyed by
the European impact. (Ref. 83, 119, 154)

Forward to Africa: A.D. 1801 to 1900
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. Intro to Era

America

. Central and Northern Asia
. Europe

. The Far East

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. The Near East

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ONAURWNP

Note:Eritrea was colonized by the Italians in 1890, but otherwise Ethiopia
remained independent throughout the century. The Oromos in the south,
which were the largest group in the country, were subjugated in late
century by Menelik II and the land was divided up among the royal family,
the church, soldiers of the conquering army and other friends of the crown.
The farmers became mere landless tenants

Africa: A.D. 1801 to 1900

AFRICA

Back to Africa: A.D. 1701 to 1800

NORTHEAST AFRICA

Ethiopia, a land of priests and monasteries, was the only Christian state in
this area. It had an emperor without power as the country was - rent by
rivalries among the provincial warlords and was subjected to repeated
attacks by Galla nomads from the south. Actually, the latter, along with
Amhara warlords, wielded the real power. In 1855 an ex-bandit, Ras Kassa,
seized power making himself Emperor Theodorus and soon became a
tyrant. In 1864 he imprisoned three members of a British mission and they
were rescued only three years later by a British military expedition coming
in from the Red Sea. Theodorus killed himself and civil war followed. A
powerful, local leader, Menelik, supported by Italy finally won out,
becoming Menelik II. He soon broke with Italy, however, and captured
some 3,000 Italians in a battle at Aduwa in 1896. He did build railways and
schools and a new capital at Addis Ababa. (Ref. 68, 175, 83)

The horn of Africa came under the control of the Sultan of Oman and
Zanzibar in the 1820s. Throughout most of the century the Sudan was
controlled by British-Egyptian administrations, but there were many
changes from decade to decade. Some of these are discussed in the
paragraphs about Egypt, to follow. In 1885 Major General Charles George
"Chinese" Gordon was killed in Khartoum by Mahdi followers, ending
Egyptian suzerainty. The religious leader Mahdi then established the f irst
Sudanese government in Omdurman. Some 13 years later, however, Lord
Kitchener defeated the Sudanese forces (1898) and started the era of the
Anglo-Egyptian Condominium, which ruled Sudan for over 50 years. Just
at the end of the century a highly developed Zandes military empire of the
Congo basin swept up into the Sudan, under King Gbudwe, but were
repulsed. (Ref. 254)

Napoleon Bonaparte had penetrated Egypt in 1798, but the British navy
helped the Turks to drive the French out in 1801, allowing Muhammad
(also Mehemet) Ali, an Albanian Turk with Albanian soldiers, to invade. In
1803 the Ottoman Sultan appointed him Pasha (viceroy) of Egypt. There
was still a Mamluk garrison present, but in 1811 Muhammad massacred
every man in it and emerged as absolute ruler of the country. He then
Europeanized the army, reformed the administration and built up the
commercial economy, employing many Europeans, especially Frenchmen.
The cultivation of cotton helped to awaken the somewhat somnolent Islam
and Ali was able to extend his control to Sennar, Arabia, Sudan, Crete and
Greece (1825-28) Europeans were considerably upset about all this and a
combined British, French and Russian naval force took Greece away from
Ali, ensuring the success of a Greek revolution, which had been in progress.
Later the Europeans made Ali relinquish a portion of Syria that he had
annexed and forced him to settle for hereditary rule over Egypt and the
Sudan, only. As a side light of this Near Eastern crisis of 1839-41, a British
squadron compelled the French Navy to withdraw support from Ali and this
stimulated the French admiralty to find new technological means to
challenge the British at sea. In turn, this resulted in the development of
steam-powered ships of war. (Ref. 279)

Egypt was independent in all but name. Some gold was found in the
southern part and the ivory trade enjoyed a boom. Some 20,000 slaves were
imported each year. When Mohammed Ali died in 1849 he left his
successors the strongest government, most efficient army and most
prosperous economy in Africa. At that time no part of northeast Africa was
under any European sovereignty. (Ref. 83) Muhammad Ali's grandson,
Ismail, educated in France, ascended to power with the title of king, while
still paying tribute to Constantinople. 30,000 Egyptian soldiers kept
northern Sudan under Turco-Egyptian rule, although there were still tribal
chiefs. In south Sudan there was a Shilluk Kingdom of Nilotic people,
although under Turkish suzerainty and a large independent tribal group
called "Nuers". (Ref. 83)

A cholera epidemic of 1831 caused the death of 13% of the population of
Cairo.

The first Egyptian railway was constructed in 1854 and others in the Near
East followed soon after. By 1875 Egypt was the only African country with
more than 1,000 miles of railroad track, but wheeled vehicles were
otherwise nowhere of use. Long staple cotton had been discovered and put
into production in the 1820s and 30s, with new land under cultivation. Cash
crops for export from Egypt included that cotton and tobacco and it should
be noted that during the American Civil War the demand for Egyptian
cotton in- creased greatly so that it became worth ten times as much money
as previously. Its worth almost trebled again in the next 45 years. (Ref. 140,
83)

French interests constructed the Suez Canal in 1869, but the English gained
a share of it by purchase from Egypt in 1875 because the canal saved 41%
of the mileage from London to Bombay and 29% of that to Singapore. After
the French and English had established a joint control over Egypt in 1880, a
native revolt against the British was led by Arabi Pasha in 1881-82, but the
British countered with a military expedition two years later which resulted
in actual British control of the country, although theoretically it was still
under Turkish jurisdiction. The French had withdrawn. In the south the
British were repeatedly under attack in the 1880s and 1890s by Muslims led
by the Mahdi and his successor, the Khalifa. (Ref. 139, 8, 175, 83)

At the end of the century the British and French again came to blows over
the eastern Sudan. The French backed down and, as mentioned earlier, the
Sudan became an Anglo- Egyptian condominium in 1898. Indian
immigrants to British East Africa eventually surpassed whites in number,
however, and currently the migration of a great many of these dark, British
citizens to England is giving the administration much trouble. (Ref. 68, 154,
8)

NORTH CENTRAL AND NORTHWEST AFRICA

This was a period when the North African coast was divided among the
imperialistic European powers, chiefly France and England. As the latter
took over Egypt, France became interested in the more western areas, in
spite of some Spanish footholds. Starting about 1830 hundreds of thousands

of southern Europeans settled in North Africa, controlling practically all
trade, industry and finance, but they did not fuse with the natives racially
and they remained a distant and distinct group, arousing increasing local
animosity. In the mountains the Berber Montagnards governed themselves
in cantons or village republics and often some of these grouped loosely
together for mutual protection. In the vast area of the central Sahara the
Tauregs, of Berber stock, were arranged in 5 groups or confederations of
tribes, named from the massifs that made up the core of their respective
territories. Raiding was the profession of the nobles and most had large
numbers of Negro slaves. (Ref. 83)

The bay of Algeria was constantly bickering with the French government
over coral fishing concessions and finally in 1830 the French intervened
with 37,000 soldiers in 103 ships and launched the largest and most
destructive military campaign in the story of European imperialism in
Africa. They had pushed the Ottoman Turks out completely by 1841, but
they made the mistake of using Jews, who were despised by the Muslims,
for support.

Abd al-Kadir, at the head of a religious group in western Algeria, set up a
Muslim theocratic state, which was only subdued in 1847 by 108,000
French troops. (Ref. 83) By that time there were 100,000 European settlers
in Algeria, with the French in control. Further insult to that country
occurred in 1867-68 with the worst drought of its history, along with locusts
and cholera. Some 300,000 people died out of a population of 2 1/2 million.
The French also occupied Tunis in 1881, provoking a large scale Islamic
uprising, followed by sporadic warfare in the south, in the next century.
Phosphates from Tunis were used as fertilizer in France. (Ref. 8, 176, 213)
Morocco kept foreigners pretty much at bay until 1850, when the French
waged a victorious war to become, in essence, the owner of that country.
(Ref. 83)

In the meantime, the Ottoman Turks had obtained a firm hold on Tripoli,
the Fezzan and Cyrenica by 1835. In the oasis of Jaghbut in the latter
country, the Muslim teacher, Sayyid Muhammad al-Sanusi (Grad Sanusi)
established a religious center, which was continued after his death in 1859

by his son, Muhammed al-Mahdi. Missionaries were sent from the center
out along the caravan routes. (Ref. 83)

We must not leave this section on North Africa without mentioning its
troubles with the new United States of America at the beginning of this
century. Throughout the Napoleonic Wars the United States had attempted
to remain neutral in foreign struggles and had paid almost $2,000,000 or 1/5
of its national income to the Moslem states of Morocco, Algiers, Tunis and
Tripoli for ransom or tolls. When President Jefferson cut out some of the
tolls in 1801 the bashaw of Tripoli declared war on the new nation. In 1804
Commodore Preble attacked Tripoli with the U.S.S. Constitution and the f
rigate Philadelphia, was taken prisoner, but then rescued by the night-time
heroics of Lt. Stephen Decature, in the captured schooner Intrepid. This,
coupled with a heroic desert march by William Eaton across Libya, resulted
in a final favorable treaty with Tripoli, which was later repudiated.

SUB-SAHARAN AFRICA

At the beginning of the century the interior of Af rica was almost wholly
isolated from the rest of the world. The only resident Europeans lived
precariously along the coasts where the slave forts and trading posts
existed. Most of Africa lagged 100 years behind in economic development,
a feature which led to many of the African problems of the 20th century. It
will be convenient to discuss the history of Sub-Saharan Africa in the first
half of the century separately from that of the second half, and in each
instance five main areas will be listed. For the first half of the 19th century,
then:

SUDANIC STATES (Immediately sub-saharan and western forest belt)

In the west there were the theocracies of Futa Toro and Futa Jellon, formed
after fierce holy wars conducted by Al-hajj Umar. At the southwest corner
of the great western bulge of Africa some 2,500 former United States slaves
formed the country of Liberia in 1820, introducing American democratic
institutions. (Ref. 217) In the Niger River bend the great empires of

medieval times had given way to numerous states, chief of which were
Segu, Ka'arta and Masina. Farther east the whole of Hausaland, including
the Kingdom of Bornu about Lake Chad, was overrun and destroyed by the
Fulani, under a Tukulor chief, Usman (or Uthman) dan Fodio, in a" jihad"
or holy war. The Fulani, of mixed Negro and Berber origin, had a
formidable army of horsemen and from Hausaland they struck east and
southwest, forming a Muslim Empire of Sokoto under the Kanemi Dynasty.
By 1850 this was the most extensive political structure in Africa,
comprising 20 provinces in an area of 150,000 square miles between the
Sahara and the forest belt. It was through this empire that Islam penetrated
into the southern forest states. Between Lake Chad and the Nile were the
sultanates of Wadai and Darf ut and on the Nile was the Funj Sultan ate of
Sennar. All of these communities had extensive trade across the Sahara,
bartering slaves, leather, kola nuts, etc., in exchange for weapons, horses
and holy books. All of the Sudanic states except Segu and Ka'arta had
Muslim rulers. (Ref. 211, 8, 175, 68)

Ashanti (modern Ghana), Dahomey, Oyo and Benin (modern Nigeria) all
had active, relatively progressive kingdoms, as in the last century. Italian
made coins in the form of milled, coral cylinders, perforated in the center
and called "olivette" remained in common usage throughout the 19th
century and even to the present day in Nigeria, Sierra Leone and Liberia.
The Africans carry them on a string on their belts. (Ref. 260)

(Continue on page 1055) Continue to Sudanic States

EQUATORIAL AFRICA

This portion of Africa was still an unexplored area and the course of the
Congo was unknown to Europeans. Slave trade to Cuba and Brazil
flourished up until 1840, when it was officially banned. The people of the
interior Congo basin were now chiefly of Negroid stock, speaking Bantu
languages, having replaced most of the original pygmoid[footnote] and
bushmanoid hunters. (Ref. 83) (Continue on page 1056)

As late as 1890, however, Stanley reported that he had found Mbuti
pygmies living in symbiosis with neighboring Negroes in the Ituri forest.

(Ref. 83)

EAST AFRICA AND THE GREAT LAKES AREA

In this part of Africa there were a cluster of strong kingdoms - Bunyoroo,
Buganda, Ankole, Karagwe, Rwanda and Burundi. To the east the hostile
Masai terrorized central Kenya and Tanzania as they repeatedly raided for
cattle. Arabs on the east coast grew rich from the sale of ivory from
elephant tusks and in the slave trade, which they continued well past the
half century mark. The eastern Bantu-speaking Negroes have lighter skin
than others, perhaps from considerable intermarriage with people of
Caucasoid stock. (Ref. 83) (Continue on page 1056)

SAVANNAH SOUTH OF THE CONGO BASIN

Luba-Lunda was ruled by Mwata Yamvo and Mwata Kazemk. The ancient
kingdom of Mwene Mtapa in the region of modern Zimbabwe was rivalled
by the Rozwi state of the Changamires. The last people to inhabit the city of
Zimbabwe, which was already somewhat decadent, were apparently driven
out about 1830 during the Zulu wars, which will be discussed in the next
paragraph. Into the vacuum so created, the Ndebeles tribe swept in from the
original Zulu area in the south. On the west side of the continent the
Portuguese had coastal settlements in what is now Angola, but after the
abolition of the slave trade in 1840, the colonies collapsed and the number
of white men there dropped from 3,000 to less than 1000 by A.D. 1850.
(Ref. 175, 176, 8, 35, 83) (Continue on page 1057)

THE CAPE AREA

An expedition along the Orange River in 1801 revealed a city of 10,000
people in the territory now called Botswana, which is surrounded by desert.
Although millet and some legumes were used, the people relied chiefly on
cattle, using the milk in a curdled state.

Both Dutch and British had started settlements near the Cape at the end of
the 18th century and in the early years of the 19th they came in contact with
a great southward migration of the Bantu-speaking blacks from central
Africa. These included multiple tribes such as Swazi, Zulu, Pondo, Tembu,
Xhosa, Sotho and Tswana. There was cattle raiding along the line of the
Fish River and fighting between the Dutch and the natives had broken out
in 1779 to last over a hundred years. After the British officially came into
power at Cape Colony by treaty with the Batavian Republic in 1814, they
decided to secure the line of the Fish River by colonization. Between 1820
and 1821 some 5,000 people were brought there from Great Britain. English
began to replace Dutch as the official language, the judicial system was
remodel ed on the English pattern and Dutch currency was replaced by
English. But Anglicisation was not completely successful as the Dutch
clung tenaciously to their own culture and institutions so that the only result
of the new policy was to harden those differences of opinion, especially on
the native question.

When the English missionaries got slavery abolished in 1833, the settlers
were indignant.

The first crisis came in 1834 when hordes of blacks swept over the Fish
River frontier, laying waste the country and destroying the farms. The
governor, Sir Benjamin D'Urban, drove them back and annexed the territory
to try to prevent future trouble, but the missionaries forced abandonment of
that plan and prevented any compensation for the damaged farms. Thus was
provoked the Great Trek, in which about 5,000 Boers (Dutch), with women,
children and cattle, set out into the unknown, some going as far as 1,000
miles inland, to get away from the British. Many were attacked by Matabele
and the Zulus and all endured thirst and famine.

At about that same time, the empire of the Zulus, under Chaka and his
successor Dingaan, began a war of blacks against blacks, crushing all other
tribes in the area and leaving a trail of devastation, rotting corpses and
burned villages. Most of modern Transvaal, Orange Free State and Natal
were denuded of population. The massacres of thousands of natives thus
gave the Boers room to move, although in great peril. They, themselves,
finally crushed the Zulus in a great battle at Blood River in 1838 and then

established the Republic of Natal in the region east of the Drakenburg
range, with Andries Pretorius as its first president

They then discovered that there was already a garrison of British troops at
Port Natal (later Deurbar) and by 1843 the area was made into a British
colony. Most of the Dutch then went back over the range to the region of
the Orange and Vaal rivers to establish the independent Boer state of the
South African Republic (Transvaal) and two years later the Orange Free
State. (Ref. 211, 154, 83) (Continue on page 1057)

The last half of the 19th century showed some great changes in those
portions of Africa under European control, but even as late as 1875 those
areas were primarily Algeria, Senegal and South Africa, although the
pressure was gradually increasing overall. Although the European slave
trade was supposedly banned early in the century, by 1850 some 25,000,000
blacks, supplied by local Africans, had been sent away from the continent
by European, American, and Arab slavers. But Christian missionary activity
increased and the hinterlands began to be explored with gun-boats behind
them. As the Europeans gradually increased their coastal influence, the Age
of Imperialism in Africa was initiated. This was about 1860 and we shall
now re-examine the five sections of sub-saharan Africa as they received the
impact of the 2nd half of the 19th century:

SUDANIC STATES

The Ashanti Kingdom comprised most of what is modern Ghana and in
1850 had 3,000,000 to 5,000,000 people in its 125,000 square miles. There
was great opulence in the royal court at the capital, Kumasi. In an unusual
arrangement, a new ruler was chosen by the Queen Mother, assisted by
senior chiefs. Trade was active in gold, slaves, livestock and food-stuffs. In
neighboring Dahomey there was a royal core of women warriors consisting
of some 5,000 women backed up by 7,000 men. It was their custom to have
an annual killing of several score criminals and war captives.

The French began to penetrate along the Senegal River to obtain a
profitable gum trade and the British began to occupy Sierra Leone and to

take over the Niger basin.

A crown colony was established at Lago in Nigeria in 1861 and by the
1870s there were 14 British steamers on the Niger River. On the upper
Niger, however, the Tukolors, under their leader al-Haji Umar, were active
and expanded to come up against the French on the Senegal.

EQUATORIAL AFRICA

White explorers penetrated central Africa in this time period, going chiefly
from east to west. Prominent among those was Sir Henry Morton
Stanley[footnote] who explored the Congo for King Leopold of Belgium
and then sold the southern bank area to Belgium. France signed treaties
with the Bateke Kingdom for the north bank of the Congo, through the
explorer Savorgnan de Brazza. All of this European penetration would have
been impossible without quinine for control of the endemic malaria. The
Dutch had originally obtained that drug from Java.

Stanley, born in Wales as John Rowlands, took the name of his adoptive
father in New Orleans, fought on both sides of the American Civil War,
found David Livingston on Lake Tanganyika in 1817 on commission by the
New York Herald and finally sold his services for African exploration to
Belgium. (Ref. 53)

The scramble for land in Africa by European powers became so intense that
in November, 1884 Otto von Bismarck and the French premier called a
Berlin Conference in which 14 nations took part. In addition to agreeing to
work for the further suppression of slavery, the nations agreed to complete
liberty of commerce in the Congo basin and adjacent coasts and the Congo
and Niger rivers were to have free navigation.

Deep in the rain forest, however, pygmies and negroids still ruled
unmolested by whites. In Katanga, Msiri, with Yeke followers, established
himself as chief and initiated a reign of terror. Fortress grounds were littered
with skulls of people he had tortured and murdered. That empire
disappeared by the 1880s. (Ref. 83, 8, 140)

EAST AFRICA AND GREAT LAKE AREA

In 1850, through the genius of Sultan Sayyid Said of Oman, Zanzibar was
made into an influential center, with a small army and navy. By 1860,
however, it was under some British influence and by 1873 the British navy
had stopped the sultan from trading in slaves. (Ref. 213) Buganda, now a
province of modern Uganda, launched great raids under Mutesa I between
1854 and 1883 to obtain slaves, cattle and ivory. For this purpose Mutesa
had a large army and a navy of canoes for use on Lake Victoria. That
country also fell under British protection in the 1890s.

In Kenya the basic Kikuyu people had no chiefs and were ruled by a senior
elders' council. They were repeatedly terrorized by- the Masai, who
dominated an area of 80,000 square miles and who had two passions in life
- war and cattle. Because of these warriors, when white explorers such as
Burton, Speke, Grant, and Stanley went in to central Africa they went from
the south over dry bush country infested with many tropical diseases.

Even the Masai, themselves, were decimated in the 1880s, but that was
from small-pox. The great days of the Masai ended in the 1890s as the
British occupied the Kenya highlands. Many of the large game animals
were already becoming limited and a few, such as the quagga[footnote],
were already extinct.

Similar to a zebra

SAVANNAH SOUTH OF THE CONGO BASIN

It has been noted previously that Portugal had an early lead in Angola and
then she took Mozambique. Actually there were very few whites in those
two areas, including only about a dozen priests. The white men did
intermarry with the natives and kept some measure of control in that way.
Germany, not to be outdone, wedged into areas on the Indian Ocean coast
north of Mozambique and Cameroun and in Togo (German Southwest
Africa) in the west. In the second phase of European partition of Africa,
after 1895, there was increasing bitter, local African resistance. The colonial
governments had turned to raising money by direct local taxation and
corvee, or forced labor systems, had become widespread. This, along with

the expropriation of land, led to more destructive, bitter and longer wars,
with the superior weaponry of the invading Europeans winning in all
areas[footnote]. (Ref. 8, 83)

Except, as we have seen, in Ethiopia, where the Italians met defeat

THE CAPE AREA

One region where war occurred with white against white, rather than
against black, was in South Africa. By 1856 the Cape population was
roughly 267,000, including 119,000 Europeans with a Dutch majority. Natal
had about 6,500 people, chiefly English; the Orange Free State had 12,000
Europeans and the Transvaal some 18,000. Both of those were soon free of
English control. By 1857 there were 8 separate governments in South
Africa - 5 Boer republics and 3 British colonies. Intermittent fighting
continued and when the Boers of Transvaal attacked blacks led by Khama
the Great, in Boswana, the British protected the latter.

Map taken from Reference 97

Two great mineral discoveries began to effect tremendous changes in the
area. First, diamonds were discovered in an old volcano chimney along the
Vaal River and at the site of present day Kimberly, bordering English and
Boer states. Within 10 years $100,000,000 worth of diamonds had been
mined. The British, who negotiated themselves into annexing this Kimberly
region into the Cape Colony about 1870 and two Englishmen, Cecil John
Rhodes and Barney Barnato, gained most from the diamonds. Secondly,
gold was discovered on the Witwatersrand in 1886 and by 1900 some
100,000 men were employed in the gold fields. The gold rush made the
original mining camp into the city of Johannesburg, which then had
237,000 people by 1911 and more than 1,000,000 at this writing. The gold
was deep in the earth, requiring costly machinery and capital to recover it.
Rhodes, with a dream to make all Africa British, got involved only
politically in the gold industry as the British attempted to take this over.
Conflicts inevitably followed with eventually a full-scale war. Many British
at home were actually pro-Boer, including Lloyd George, but most of the
people were staunchly imperialist. Paul Kruger, who had taken part in the

Great Trek, headed the recalcitrant Dutch, who were unwilling to make
common cause with the British. They opposed any advance of industry,
although ready to feed on its profits.

In spite of long drawn out negotiation, actual war started October 9, 1899
when Boer groups moved over the border. The latter started with 35,000
men and artillery derived from German sources. Almost all were mounted.
The German presence in the region was actually the main factor which had
activated Britain to move north again. Suddenly in 1883 the Germans had
run up their flag in Luederitz Bay on the Atlantic and proclaimed the whole
of southwest Africa as a protectorate and began to survey a route fora
railroad to the east, linking up with Paul Kruger in the Transvaal and then
on to the east coast. The danger to Britain's holdings was obvious and so
they moved, annexing Pondoland, Zululand and Tongaland, cutting off the
only possible outlet of the Transvaal to the sea and then they took part of
Bechuanaland. The countryside and world opinion was with the Dutch, but
the British poured in men and arms and by autumn of 1900 both Boer
capitals had been occupied and it seemed that the war was over. But the
rebels fought on and were only finally subdued sufficiently to sue for peace
in March 1902 after thousands of men, women and children had been swept
into concentration camps. The total cost in money to the United Kingdom
of the Boer War was reckoned at over 220,000,000 pounds. The British lost
five times as many men from disease as from battle and left a legacy of

Choose Different Region

. Intro to Era

. America

. Central and Northern Asia
. Europe

. The Far East

. The Indian Subcontinent

. The Near East

. Pacific

CONAUBRWNFR

Geographical Presentation of America
Back to Introduction to the Method of Geographical Presentation

The last geographical area which will be discussed under each time-frame
will be the whole of the New World, America. Since this consists of two
major continents with an intermediate connecting region, the area will be
divided into three subdivisions.

NORTH AMERICA

This geographical area is shown on the map-diagram opposite. In the text
the historical material will often be further divided into [1] The Far North
and Canada and [2] The United States. Since we are interested in a
geographical area, not necessarily political boundaries, the first category of
"The Far North and Canada", will include Alaska and Greenland, even
though the former, of course, is a part of the United States and the latter
belongs to Denmark. The second portion will actually be limited to the
continental United States. It will be of interest to compare latitudes on this
diagram with those of Europe and the Far East. For example, we will be
reminded that the British Isles lie at about the same parallel as the southern
part of Hudson Bay in Canada and that the center of the United States is on
the same latitude as north China and the Tarim Basin in Central Asia. The
Bering Strait, the middle of Hudson Bay and the southern tip of Greenland
are all on approximately the same latitude as Leningrad in Russia.

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North America (This map was obtained
from http://english.freemap.jp/index.html
and is used with permission under a Creative
Commons Attribution 3.0 license.)

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MEXICO, CENTRAL AMERICA AND THE CARIBBEAN

The map-diagram showing this and the next subdivision is on the second-
page ahead. Mexico is shown in violet color, while Central America and the
Caribbean islands are in yellow. The Canary and southern equatorial
currents, which have been important in the discovery of the New World, are

shown. The present political lines in Central America are shown, marking
Guatemala, Belize, San Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua, Costa Rica and
Panama, going from northwest to southeast.

SOUTH AMERICA

On the South American map the rough course of the main rivers and the
general extent and location of the cordillera are shown. No attempt has been
made to outline the current borders between the various countries, but the
general areas of the most important are indicated. In the main body of the
manuscript in some time-frames this continent is divided into [1] Western
and Northern Coastal Areas and [2] Eastern and Central Areas.

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PARAGUAY

Mexico, Central America, the Caribbean,
and South America (This map was obtained
from http://english.freemap.jp/index.html
and is used with permission under a Creative
Commons Attribution 3.0 license.)

Choose Different Region

1. Africa

2. Central and Northern Asia
3. Europe

4. The Far East

5. The Indian Subcontinent
6. The Near East
7. Pacific

America: Beginning to 8000 B.C.

NORTH AMERICA

At sometime between 40,000 and 10,000 B.C. human hunting groups
occupied all the main land masses of earth except Antarctica. Men reached
America about 20,000 B.C. (perhaps earlier) from Asia over a land bridge
between Asia and Alaska, varying from three hundred to one thousand
miles wide and apparently including the Aleutian Islands where blades and
burins, perhaps dating back to 10,000 B.C. have been found. Otherwise the
earliest known cultures of the American far north have not been well

dated| footnote]. The so-called British Mountain Culture near the Yukon
Arctic coast is probably the oldest, with artifacts of eastern Siberia,
including crude instruments and shaping tools. There, in the Old Crow
Basin, the first known occupation site in the New World has been
tentatively carbon-dated to 25,000 B.C. The inhabitants were skilled users
of bone, using mammoth and horse bone, the latter animals ranging in size
from ponies to Percherons. Jaws of domesticated dogs appear to be 30,000
years old. At any rate, the people who came over the land bridge apparently
simply followed their prey animals and were of a basic, general Mongoloid
stock with skulls not much different from Caucasians and their descendants
became the American Indians. The tools and skills spread from Asia to
America with them and included the stone adze, spoons, combs of bone or
horn, the toggle harpoon and eventually the bow and arrow. Marshack (Ref.
130) says the American Indians came in waves from Asia over a period of
perhaps 20,000 years with some as late as 2,000 B.C. The latter figure is not
further explained. We know that the land bridge was present off and on over
several millennia, but never as late as 2,000 B.C. It is interesting that as late
as 1962 this theory of the Asiatic origin of the American aborigines was not
universally accepted. Greeman (Ref. 78) was committed to diffusion across
the north Atlantic in skin-covered boats in the Upper Paleolithic times. He
felt that Sandia Culture material in America was the same as the Solutrean
of the Montaut site in southwest France. Blood typing studies beginning
with Boyd (Ref. 17) in 1963 probably laid this theory to rest.

Trager (Ref. 222) even states that racemization tests on bone suggest that
Neanderthal man may have been on the west coast of the western

hemisphere at 50,000 B.C., but we have not seen confirmation from any
other author and Trager does not reveal his source material.

The great bulk of the people coming over the Bering land bridge may not
have been able to migrate down into the region of the United States and
farther south until about 12,000 years ago when the ice that had previously
almost covered Canada finally melted enough to open a corridor east of the
Rockies, at which time the Mongoloid hunters poured through to the
gamelands of the American plains. Dr. Knut Fladmark (as quoted by Canby
[Ref. 22]) of British Columbia argues that some men could have come
south when the corridor was closed by leapfrogging down the coast where
there were many ice-free pockets, by boat. Furthermore, recent work shows
positively that much of the coast line and island archipelago off the coast of
southern Alaska was never covered by glaciers at any time. (Ref. 239)

A slightly different view is given by Swanson et al (Ref. 209) who states
that the first crossing of the Bering Strait occurred from 26,000 to 28,000
years ago and that these people became the American Indians with blood
types chiefly O, with some A and no B. Then a second migration took place
between 10,000 and 20,000 years ago which perhaps included the Eskimos
who have AB and 0 blood types. They may have come by kayak from one
shore to another as Eskimos today still live on both sides of the Bering
Strait. By 10,000 B.C. prehistoric hunters were in all parts of the New
World, even at Tierra del Fuego. Some fishing and gathering populations
were very large. The highest average population density north of Mexico
was in California where there were the acorn gatherers, a group which was
so successful that they were not apt to experiment with new techniques. The
most recent glaciation period in North America reached its maximum
between 18,000 and 22,000 years ago and extended down to New York
State and central Ohio, covering Minnesota, Wisconsin, Iowa, Illinois and
parts of Kansas and Missouri. After 12,000 B.C. this retreated rapidly,
sometimes several miles in a single year.

At 9,000 B.C. the American plains still teemed with giant bison, camels,
stagmoose, musk-oxen, large cats, mastodons and three kinds of

mammoths. Most of these were gone within 1,000 years of man's arrival.
The dating of the flint spearheads of the Sandia Culture which have been

found in Oregon, Ontario and New Mexico have been variously dated from
23,000 to 6,000 B.C. At any rate it was along the retreating ice edge, where
the spruce forest and pines migrated north and west from the Appalachians
and the oak moved north from the Gulf, that the increased parkland and
grass allowed the human population, now with a radical new stone
technology, to greatly increase. This was the time of the Great Hunting
Culture, associated with the Clovis points of the Sandia Culture mentioned
above. These Clovis points (so named because first identified near Clovis,
New Mexico) were large, heavy flint points designed for hunting large
animals, and butchered elephants have been excavated dating to the period
9,500 to 9,000 B.C. In some areas this culture, also sometimes called Llano,
has been dated from 11,000 to 15,000 years ago. The Folsom spear points
which developed from the Clovis were smaller and more delicately made,
for effective use by the bison hunters.

As temperatures rose and the cloud cover diminished, there was an
increased evaporation rate, the plant cover thinned and the great herds
declined rapidly. Some feel that prior to the temperature rise the north-south
corridor opened up in the glaciers allowing arctic winds to descend on the
plains, and the sudden drop in temperature was a factor in the dying off of
the giant bison and mastodons. The Desert Tradition of western North
America, dating from about 9,000 B.C. was centered in the Great Basin of
Nevada between the two great mountain chains and occupying portions of
six present states - Nevada, Wyoming, Idaho, Oregon and California.
Baskets and milling stones were made and the subsistence base included
small seeds, berries, bulrush rhizomes and nuts.

In eastern United States, some forty miles south of Pittsburg is the
Meadowcroft rock shelter where remains of Ice Age man includes a bifacial
projectile point which may be ancestral to the Clovis point. The carbon-14
dating of the hearth is 14,000 B.C. but some doubt if this date is correct.

Concerning blood types, most North American Indians are exclusively type
O but a few, such as the Sioux, Chippewa and Pueblo have 10 to 15%
Group A while the rest are O. These may represent separate and later

migration groups over the Bering land bridge, or, as shall be discussed later,
possibly mixtures with Europeans or later Asiatics. (Ref. 21, 155)

Additional Notes

MEXICO, CENTRAL AMERICA, AND THE CARIBBEAN

The National Geographic Society (Ref. 155) says that artefacts suggest
man's presence at Puebla, Mexico by 20,000 B.C. although such early dates
are not universally accepted. The rock shelters near Tehuacan have been
continuously occupied since 10,000 B.C. In Central America gourd and
squash date to prehistory along with various wild forms of beans, lentils and
chickpeas. (Ref. 211)

SOUTH AMERICA

The tools of Pleistocene men who hunted camelids, sloths and perhaps
horses have been unearthed at the bottom of a rock shelter on the western
slope of the Andes cordillera. The presence of humans has been attested
13,000 years ago in Venezuela, Argentina and Peru. During the last phase of
the Ice Age (the Wisconsin in North America) the Andean glaciers were as
low as 11,000 feet and their melting later may account for the rarity of
human sites during that chaotic period of terrific gorge flooding. After that,
however, the Andes were certainly inhabited by numerous bands
corresponding to the archaic societies of North America. In central Peru, at
Chilca, where at 12,000 to 13,000 feet altitude only eight inches of rain fall
in a year, caves with as many as fourteen archeological strata have been
excavated. Perfectly preserved corpses of several people have been found
indicating a stout but tall physique, varying from 65.2 to 69.2 inches in
height according to sex, with long heads, protuberant jaws and strong
bones. They had clothes made of cactus plant fibers or of reeds. Some had
cloaks of vicuna skin, painted and sewn with the help of cactus spines.
Weapons were slings and spear throwers with javelin points made from
obsidian, basalt or quartz. Hand axes and scrapers were very similar to the
European Mousterians', although separated in time by some 20,000 years.
At about 13,000 B.C. the waters of the Pacific were some three hundred
feet below present level, and at times since then they have been sixteen feet

above the present level and have oscillated through the ages. This may have
greatly disturbed the lives of the early dwellers by virtue of changes in the
fresh water levels of the beaches of arid, western Peru.

Human living sites along with bones of sloths, horses, camelids and
mastodons have also been found in the sierra region (the Atlantic Andes) of
Columbia and Venezuela. Men may have reached the extreme tip of South
America at Falls' Cave by 9,000 B.C. or shortly thereafter, but there may be
some disagreement as to their origin. In this area Patagonian caves were
inhabited during the high Holocene and immigrants from Australia or
Southeast Asia may have entered the continent via Antarctica and the island
of Tierra del Fuego. Still later other settlers came from the eastern Andes.
On Tierra del Fuego the chief people were Onas - big, handsome men
dressed in vicuna skins. They had domesticated dogs and poison arrows and
removed their body hair with shells used as pincers.

The Lagoa Santa caves in Brazil show charcoal dating to between 18,000
and 20,000 B.C. and tools along with mastodon bones dating to 9,400 B.C.
have been found in central Chile. El Ingo is a pre-ceramic site at an altitude
of 9,100 feet in Ecuador, dating back to about 10,000 B.C. showing an
obsidian workshop and hunting camp site. The tools show similarity to
Folsom and Clovis points of North America. (Ref. 45, 22, 62) Additional
Notes

It has been the belief of authorities in the past that all Central and South
American Indians had the blood type 0 exclusively. Very recent ABO
blood-group antigen and HL-A white cell studies indicate that this was not
true of Peruvian and Chilean coastal peoples even at 3,000 B.C. Both A and
B were found in mummies of Paracas, Huari and Ica while AB was found in
these areas plus those of the Huacho and Nazca. Only the Inca mummies
were 100% 0 and only five of these were studied. Of only four Chile
Atacamenas mummies typed, all were type A. We do not know what this
means, but it is possible that these studies are compatible with ideas of pre-
Columbian diffusion from Europe or Asia, a feature we shall discuss later.
(Ref. 3) Professor Frederic Andre Engel (Ref. 62) who has spent most of his
adult life as an archeologist in South America re-emphasizes that although
one must accept an Asiatic foundation, evidences of strong foreign

influences appear almost everywhere in the Americas, even in pre-
Columbian times.

Note:Paleo-Indian skeletons have been found near Waco. Texas radio-
carbon dated to 10,000 years ago. Artifacts buried with them indicate trade,
with sea shell pendants, red flints from the Texas Panhandle, projectile
points from the plains and some tools. Some burial objects indicate a death
ritual, perhaps related to a religion. Bones of cooked rabbits, turtles,
raccoons and snakes were present. (Ref. 298)

Note:Rock art has been found in Brazil dated to 17,000 B.C. and at the tip
of South America dating to 10,000 B.C. (Ref. 260)

Forward to America: 8000 to 5000 B.C.
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CONDMDUBRWN FE

America: 8000 to 5000 B.C.

NORTH AMERICA
Back to America: Beginning to 8000 B.C.

The land bridge from Siberia to Alaska became inundated about 8,000 B.C.
and, as mentioned previously, the later arriving Eskimos and Aleuts came
by boat and represented the later, classical Mongolian race, as contrasted to
the earlier original Mongolian stock who came over about 20,000 B.C.
Possibly still later came the Athapascans, who slowly moved inland where
many still live today in central, northern Canada. Some of these
Athapascans eventually migrated down to the southwest United States
where they became the Apaches and Navajos. Additional Notes

In the United States area big game hunting continued throughout this period
but with a gradual decrease in the number of animals available. By 8,000
B.C. North American Indian culture was already divided into three great
patterns:

e Eastern Woodlands, which will later be called "Archaic"
¢ Desert, possibly related to Eastern Woodland
e Western Paleo-Indian

Although the Eastern Woodlands actually existed from 8,000 B.C. to about
1,000 B.C., during this 8,000 to 5,000 B.C. period under discussion it was
called "Early Archaic" and was characterized by big game hunting with
fishing and shell and plant gathering. Burial mounds were being built in
eastern Canada by 5,000 B.C. (Ref. 213) In the mid-west there was a related
sub-culture called "Modoc", with evidence of mano and metate (stone
mortar and pestle) existing about 7,200 B.C. Another variation existed in
the Ozarks, Oklahoma and Mississippi. Additional Notes

The Western Paleo-Indian Culture was originally a big game hunting
tradition congregated in the Great Basin lying between the Cascade
Mountains of southern Oregon and the Rockies of Idaho and running south
through Nevada, western Utah and the eastern part of California. The "Old

Cordilleran Tradition" is a name given to the culture of Indians in the
Oregon and Washington areas dating from 7,800 to 5,700 B.C. who used
characteristic flaked stone points known as "Cascade points". Around 7,000
B.C. some of the hunters from the Great Basin area migrated south into the
mountains and tablelands of the southwest- i.e. southern Colorado and
Utah, along with Arizona, New Mexico and the Mexican states of Sonoro
and Chihuahua. This migration was probably precipitated by weather
changes which were making semi-arid deserts of the previous great
savannahs of the Basin, and the consequent disappearance of the game. One
large branch of these ancient immigrants to the southwest has been given
the name recently of "Cochise" (from a county in Arizona). The so-called
Sulfur Springs Phase of this culture ran from 7,000 to 5,000 B.C. and was a
society dependent on hunting ancient horses, mammoths, antelope and
bison with flaked projectile points. The Lake Mojave area of southern
California has yielded kite-shaped points, choppers, drills and scrapers,
some of which have been dated back to 9,000 B.C. At 6,000 B.C. the
climate changed with a marked rise in temperature associated with drought.
The great herds died out including the mastodons and camels. Many areas
were denuded and there was a shifting of Indian population and a change in
their living patterns. (Ref. 45, 209, 210)

MEXICO, CENTRAL AMERICA, AND THE CARIBBEAN

By 7,000 B.C. in the Tehuacan Valley of Mexico there were people living in
rock shelters and using stone cooking pots which were left in the center of
the hearth. Maize was used in the same valley between 6,000 and 5,000
B.C. and at some point the turkey was domesticated. Before the
development of pottery some peoples may have used animal stomachs as
liquid containers to hang over fires. In the same valley there is evidence of
the use of six food resources--the maguey plant, cactus fruits (prickly pear),
tree legumes like the mesquite, wild grasses, deer and rabbits. Cultivated
plants probably made up only 5% of the diet, as opposed to 54% from
hunting and 41% from collecting wild plants. The common bean and maize
were introduced into the valley about 5,000 B.C. Maize apparently went
under considerable genetic change with cultivation, but since it lacks an
important amino acid, it was fortunate for the Indians that it was eaten in
connection with beans, which supplied the deficit. (See also Africa in the

16th century C.E.). There was squash in the Mexican highlands before
5,000 B.C. (Ref. 211, 209)

SOUTH AMERICA

As early as 8,000 B.C. the need for artistic expression apparently existed in
the high Andes. We mentioned in the last chapter that prehistoric people
had painted clothing, but now we can add necklaces, bracelets, carved
pendants and geometrically marked bones, painted green. These people ate
prickly pear cactus, alder seeds, tomatoes and plants with rhizomes and
tubers such as jiquimas, potatoes, ullucu and possibly manioc and sweet
potatoes. There is also refuse of many land mammals such as bucks and roe
deer, vixcahas, camelids and rodents, as well as the remains of fish.
Although the caves were sixty miles from the ocean, marine mollusks have
been found, suggesting that these men migrated at times to the seashore,
probably living in the condensed fog oases called lomas, as the beach land
otherwise is completely arid. By 7,000 B.C. there were all sorts of projectile
points in Venezuela, Chile, Bolivia and Peru. Long-headed human skeletons
along with both extinct and modern animals have been found in Brazil
dated to the same time.

Natives of both Americas are of extremely varied types. In South America
there are people with Caucasian appearance but dark brown skin, along
with Mongolian types with African faces, but of pale or sallow complexion.
Big, straight non-aquiline noses are seen frequently near Cuzco in the high
Andes, where non-Mongolian characteristics mix with true Asiatic ones.
Many scholars such as Julian Steward, Paul Rivet, Miguel Covarrubias and
Heine Gildern, as well as Heyerdahl and Fell, who will be mentioned often
in this manuscript, are all coming to the conclusion that transoceanic
voyages from southern Asia, Polynesia, even Australia or Africa, have
helped people the New World since the Bering Strait migration. The early
men of 8,000 to 4,000 B.C. unearthed in the excavations of Professor Engel
(Ref. 62) were all dolichocephals, prognathous, big-boned and tall, whereas
the 16th century people found by the Spaniards were of only mediocre
height, meso or brachycephalic with short limbs and slender frames.

By 6,000 B.C. some Andean populations were already advanced to the
stage of comparable groups in the Near East, not yet true farmers or
herders, but living a sedentary type of life, occupying well defined
territories. On a south Peruvian plain between mountain spurs, inland from
the coast at about the 16th parallel, there were hundreds of inhabitants using
water from now dry wadis. Seashore villages of the same millennium have
also been found and because of the complete surface dessication, humans
have been uncovered by simply brushing off the sand. They still have their
clothes, skin and eyes after 7,000 to 9,000 years. Milling stones have been
found in every hut and in graves, particularly in the Santa Valley of Peru
and the eastern Andes. It is possible that llamas and alpacas began to be
domesticated on the eastern slopes at about 6,000 B.C.

In the Columbia and Venezuela areas between 7,000 and 3,000 B.C. Meso-
Indians lived, eating seafood, berries, seeds, roots and tubers. Remnant now
can be identified by the large mounds of shells, ashes and food debris.
These northern South Americans were also navigators, for traces of the
same people are found on all adjacent islands. Documentation regarding
humid Chile and Argentina is lacking in this early period, although groups
of pre-agriculturalists certainly occupied the western slope of the Chilean
Andes at times about 8,000 B.C. although perhaps not continuously. It is
possible that some fifty valleys in central Peru and arid Chile were
inhabited by groups of up to 2,000 people before agriculture appeared on
the coast. (Ref. 209, 45, 62)

Note:Excavations at Anangula Island in the Aleutian chain show evidence
of settlement there around 7,000 B.C. Mummies on neighboring islands are
wrapped in furs and woven grasses. (Ref. 310)

Note:Paleo-Indian skeletons, a man and boy with heads resting on turtle
shells, found at Round Rock, Texas, have been dated at about 7000 B.C.
(Ref. 298)

Forward to America: 5000 to 3000 B.C.
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Europe

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ONRDUBRWNPE

America: 5000 to 3000 B.C.

NORTH AMERICA

Back to America: 8000 to 5000 B.C.

1. FAR NORTH AND CANADA

In the far north there was a micro-blade tradition called "Little Arm" with
evidence of caribou and elk hunting dated from 5,500 to 4,000 B.C. In
Canada by 4,000 B.C. the Maritime Provinces were settled by hunters,
fishers, and gatherers. The Columbia plateau folks, previously mentioned,
were hunting elk and deer in the forests of Douglas fir and western yellow
pine, and fishing for salmon in the Columbia by 9,000 B.C. (Ref. 209, 45)

2. THE UNITED STATES

Between 5,000 and 3,800 B.C. the temperature lowered again and
precipitation increased so that some game returned as the climate
approached what it is today. Even so the hunting cultures gradually gave
way to a type in which the people were not specialized in a single skill but
were versatile enough to attempt other things.

In the Eastern Woodlands there was now a "Middle Period" with great
variation from area to area. Some used antlers and bones for fish-hooks,
spears and harpoons, some learned to use copper for tools and ornaments.
In the latter respect, a distinctive culture of the Great Lakes and upper
Mississippi Valley, beginning about 4,500 B.C., was the "Old Copper
Culture" in which the metal was worked either in the cold or hot state, but it
was never melted or cast. Knives, barbed harpoon points and atlatl weights
(throwing sticks) were made in this way. There was no big game present
and most of the inhabitants of the eastern societies used steatite vessels. The
earliest of the Archaic Cultures is sometimes called the southern "Indian
Knoll Society", with a later northern Lauretain Culture about the Great

Lakes and on eastward where along the Labrador coast it eventually came
face to face with Eskimos. (Ref. 64, 45, 209)

The western Desert Culture was oriented toward plants, collecting of small
seeds and roots for food. Plant fibers were used for baskets, footwear and
nets for snares.

In the southwest, the Chircahua Phase of the Cochise Culture made its
appearance about 5,000 B.C. and was to last about 3,000 years. It was there
that maize first appeared in the United States, sometime between 3,000 and
2,000 B.C., apparently brought up from Mexico where it had been
cultivated long before. The Cochise could grow the corn because they had
the soil, the right growing season and the necessary skills and tools. They
could already weave baskets in which to store it and had long used grinding
tools to pulverize seeds and nuts. This early desert society later gave way to
the Pueblo and Mexican empires. In California the San Diego County
Archeological Society recently brought suit against a land development
firm, alleging that it intentionally marred a site thought to have been
occupied by La Jolla Indians 3,000 to 7,000 years ago[footnote] .
Excavations on Catalina Island just off the California coast, show that man
gorged himself on abalone in the 4th millennium B.C., almost wiping out
the colonies (Ref. 106, 211, 45, 210)

Complaints have been made that other construction projects have destroyed
hundreds of prehistoric Indian sites in California. Estimates give more than
600 Yokuts villages, campsites and burial grounds in Merced and Stanislaus
counties. Logging operations in the Sierra Nevada range have churned up
innumerable similar sites. Along the south coast there were Chumash,
Gabrielinos, Fernandenos and some others, depending upon a fishing and
food gathering existence. These people were apparently free of intertribal
wars and did not have the cyclical famines suffered by groups dependent
upon farm crops. They lived in large villages, used plank canoes and traded
with villages on the Channel Islands, often bartering the coastal basketry for
effigies carved from the steatite rock of Catalina (Ref. 106).

MEXICO, CENTRAL AMERICA AND THE CARIBBEAN

Santa Luisa, in the Veracruz area was occupied before 4,000 B.C. and
became major trade center with an extensive irrigation system . The people
were successful hunters and gatherers as well as early farmers. By 3,500
Mexican cave inhabitants relied heavily on agriculture. One third of their
food came from domesticated plants, including maize, beans and others.
Maize was destined to play the same role here that wheat and barley did in
the Near East. In the Tamaulipas Mountains they had begun to domesticate
summer squash and chili pepper, and the bottle gourd (as a water container).
Early man also ate grasshoppers, ants and termites.

We speculated at the beginning of this chapter that the time of about 3,100
B.C. might have been a milestone in history when some fantastic upheaval
occurred in the Atlantic, with far-reaching secondary effects in the
development of early civilizations in Egypt and the Near East. It is amazing
then, to find the zero date in the incredibly accurate Maya Calendar, which
will be described later, to be "4 Ahau Cumhu", which converts to our
calendar as August 12, 3,113 B.C.! No satisfactory explanation of that date
has ever been given, but Maya written and oral texts and those of their
descendant civilizations claim descent from a civilized people who sailed in
from the east! (Ref. 236, 211, 95)

SOUTH AMERICA

Dating to probably about 5,000 B.C., in those last centuries before real
agriculture, is the partially excavated village on a loma at Paloma on the dry
Peruvian coast. The village extends over 1,900 feet in length at an altitude
of 660 to 825 feet. Engle (Ref. 62) excavated only 2 trenches, removing
35,000 cubic feet of ruble, using only trowels and brushes. Some 90 graves
and 45 huts were thus exposed and from that he estimated, by extrapolation,
that complete uncovering of the entire village areas would involve
7,000,000 cubic feet of debris to be removed to reveal 9,000 graves in and
around some 4,000 to 5,000 houses. Obviously this was not done.

Radio-carbon datings indicate that cotton and beans were present in the
upper inter-Andean valleys about 6,000 B.C. but in the coastal villages they
were not present until 5,000 B.C. or shortly thereafter. At Chilca, about 45
miles south of Lima, portions of another village have been excavated,

showing multiple archeological layers, indicating multiple re-occupations.
Carbon 14 dating indicates the earliest habitation at 3,500 B.C. Large
mollusks were present but are no longer to be found, so the shore line may
then have been much farther east and the retreat of the ocean-line and
consequently the mollusks, may have led to the abandonment of the site.
Only a few sites have been uncovered, since a cubic yard of kitchen midden
weighs about 2,600 pounds and so sifting a village of 7 1/2 acres that forms
a mound 1 yard thick means the "---sifting some 36,000 tons of debris, the
equivalent of a train 1,000 cars long" [footnote].

From Engel (Ref. 62), page 98.

Maize was brought down from Mexico, but potatoes and manioc were
developed from local plants. The earliest dated pottery in the New World is
from Colombia, from 3,090 B.C., sand-tempered with wide-lined incising.
Cotton has been used for at least 4,000 to 6,000 years in the Andes,
replacing other plants that could be used for spinning and making cloth.

We have written something of Patagonia and Tierra del Fuego in the last
chapter. The islands of the western archipelago off the tip of South America
were still blocked by ice until about 5,000 B.C. and the Alacaluf arrived
after that time. They were a little people with the men ranging from 61 to
62.5 inches and the women 56.9 to 57.7 inches, with a truly Asiatic
appearance, including thick black hair, Mongoloid spots and very little body
hair. They lived entirely from the ocean, diving off boats made of boards
sewed together. Later these people were sold as slaves by the Chonos to the
north. (Ref. 45, 62)

Forward to America: 3000 to 1500 B.C.
Choose Different Region

. Intro to Era

. Africa

. Central and Northern Asia
. Europe

. The Far East

. The Indian Subcontinent

. The Near East

. Pacific

CONDMDUBRWNE

America: 3000 to 1500 B.C.

FAR NORTH AND CANADA
Back to America: 5000 to 3000 B.C.

There were always more people on the Aleutian Islands than on the
mainland, because of a milder climate. Nevertheless, from 4,000 to 1,000
B.C. an Arctic Small Tool tradition existed in Alaska, spreading across the
arctic part of Canada to Greenland, given its name from the miniature
blades lashed to handles of bone or walrus ivory used for cutting and
scraping skins. The blades were chipped from a core of chert, a rock of
micro-crystalline quartz. These Asiatic people even migrated to Ellesmere
Island in northeastern Canada, less than 800 miles from the North Pole,
about 2,300 B.C., crossing over the mountains in a great notch, today
known as Sverdrup Pass, to the upper end of Baffin Bay, which usually has
open water at least in the summer. Canadian archeologists have excavated
some of these pre-historic sites, where the earliest are now thirty to thirty-
five meters above the present sea level, although they were originally on the
beach. As in other northern areas of the globe, the earth's crust has risen
slowly over the centuries after the lifting of the great weight of the glacial
ice. From Ellesmere Island progress into northern Greenland over winter ice
was no problem. By about 1,500 B.C. in British Columbia (and Washington
state) people were settled in villages and fished for salmon, although they
did not practice cultivation. (Ref. 209, 45, 189)

This is the era of the so-called Red Paint Culture, with native Amerindian
Stone Age traditions derived from old northeastern Asia. The Red Paint or
Moorehead Culture originally described from prehistoric graveyards in
Maine - the graves containing red ochre has now been identified as part of a
larger maritime Archaic tradition extending from northern Labrador at the
60th parallel to southern Maine between about 2,000 and 1,500 B.C. This
area was deglaciated about 7,000 B.C. with tundra then present until about
3,000 when spruce forests finally appeared. The settlement pattern and life
styles of these Red Paint people seems to have been different from both the
Eskimos and the Montagnais-Naskopi Indians of inland Labrador and
Quebec. Hunting, fishing, trading tools and raw materials and burying their

dead were definable activities. The roots of this culture may have extended
back several thousand years to the Paleo-Indian hunters of the now
submerged continental shelf. (Ref. 69)

THE UNITED STATES

The reader is advised to review the preceding two paragraphs concerning
Maine and Washington State. In the east the eastern Archaic Culture was
changing about 2,000 B.C. in that there was the manufacture of some crude
pottery and there was an increased attention to burial observances. Some
call this the beginning of the Woodland Culture and others call it simply the
Late Period of the Archaic of the Eastern Woodland. At the same time, in
the southwestern states, specialized desert cultures continued to develop
from the Archaic. As recorded in the last chapter, the Cochise began
cultivating corn sometime from 3,000 to 2,000 B.C., providing them extra
nourishment for their uncertain diet. Squash now was also brought up from
Mexico and tiny gardens of both have been found all over the Cochise
wandering area. Santa Catalina Island, twenty miles off the California coast,
as previously noted, was inhabited and some forty Indian town sites have
been identified. It is obvious that coastal Indians had facilities for ocean
travel. (Ref. 45, 64, 210, 187)

MEXICO, CENTRAL AMERICA AND THE CARIBBEAN

The "Pre-Classic Age" of Middle America traditionally began about 2,000
B.C. with Mayan ancestors being simple village farmers, although the
earliest Maya carbon dating on the Caribbean side of Yucatan goes back to
between 2,750 and 2,450 B.C. It is entirely possible the Maya beginnings
may go back to Ecuador at 3,000 B.C. while the Olmec civilization began
separately on the Gulf coast much later. In 1977 Norman Hammond (Ref.
85) published results of archeological excavations in Belize (formerly
British Honduras) which seem to confirm the origins of the Maya back at
about 2,600-2,500 B.C. He describes a lowland pottery called "Swash",
found in burial sites with human skeletons. The adults among the latter
showed advanced tooth wear, suggesting abrasives in their diet. The Maya
steeped corn in slaked lime before boiling, to soften it (and incidentally it

released certain amino-acids not otherwise absorbable) and this lime, along
with grit derived in the grinding process probably accounted for the tooth
wear. These individuals also constructed raised earth platforms in swamps
by digging out drainage channels and throwing the mud up to make
platforms on which various crops were grown. The presence of jade, not
naturally present within 350 kilometers, indicates a trade network. Their
Swasey ceramics - colorful, decorative and mature - are different from that
of Mexico and the southern United States of 2,500 B.C., but are similar to
Ecuadorian pottery of this period. Throughout Central America maize-
farming had become the basis of life by 1,500 B.C. and the farmers lived in
permanent villages. By the same date in the Tehuacan Valley of Mexico,
there was complex village life, pottery, elaborated religious rituals and
intricate social organization. Corn and pottery have been dated to 2,000

SOUTH AMERICA

Valdiva, as a coastal society in Ecuador, like Panama, had corn and pottery
by about 2,000 B.C.[footnote]. Evans and Meggers, of the Smithsonian
Museum, are impressed with the similarities between Valdivian pottery and
the Jomon pottery of Japan, believing Ecuador may have been the landing
place of a Japanese immigration, thus bringing one more possibility of
Asian diffusion to the Americas. We shall examine other ideas in other
chapters. Potatoes were cultivated in the Andes by 3,000 B.C., manioc was
grown on the tropical lowlands and there were domesticated animals in
South America shortly after 2,000 B.C. Ceremonial centers found along the
desert coast of Peru date to about the same time as did evidence of metal
working. The Ancon Yacht site on the coast of Peru, dated 2,500 to 2,000
B.C. showed chipped leaf points, string, turned cloth and baskets, wooden
tools, shell fishhooks and cultivated plants which included gourds, cotton
and chili peppers.

Thomas (Ref. 213) says the Ecuadorians had pottery even earlier, at 3,200
B.C.

The Peruvians used the potato by 3,000 and soon domesticated the guinea
pig for food. Coastal Peruvians gathered protein-rich shell fish off the

beaches by 2,800 and by 2,500 B.C., when the villages were large, far out

Early farmers were probably well established on the Ecuadorian sea coast
and river plains by 3,000 B.C. Contact with Mesoamerica was certainly
possible by water, but otherwise there was a 2,000 mile jungle stretch
between them. What Engel (Ref. 62) calls the "bean planters society" came
into being in the lower central Andes, along with cotton clothes and
underwear at about 2,000 B.C. The bones of sea-lions are mixed with those
of these early agriculturalists. Excavations in Venezuela, like adjacent areas,
show evidence of manioc and sweet potato cultivation from between 3,000
and 2,700 B.C. Both of these are root crops, but manioc required special
preparation to be made palatable. (Ref. 95, 62, 209)

Forward to America: 1500 to 1000 B.C.

America: 1500 to 1000 B.C.

AMERICA

Back to America: 3000 to 1500 B.C.

NORTH AMERICA

THE FAR NORTH AND CANADA

The Arctic Small Tool tradition continued across northern Canada to
Greenland and the Pacific coast Indians continued their salmon fishing,
without attempting cultivation. By 1,000 B.C. they were building villages
along the Snake, Columbia and Fraser rivers south of the Snake, there were
large oval dwellings with floors and a timber frame, usually about twenty-
five by thirty feet. (Ref. 209)

THE UNITED STATES

The Indians of North America originally had lived by hunting game and
gathering wild foods, but about 3,000 years ago they began making clay
vessels, an innovation that accompanied the appearance of agriculture in
many areas. The pottery found in various excavation sites in the United
States has a distinctive gritty temper and is often decorated with fabric or
cord impressions. One village, called the Baumer site, in southern Illinois,
covered more than ten acres and was made up of houses about sixteen feet
square. The use of local strains of corn, beans and squash after 1,500 B.C.
gave people the surplus of food and time needed to engage in some
communal activities. The first signs of mound building appeared in the
middle west about 1,000 B.C. as some villages began to bury their dead
under low earth mounds. In the southwest the Cochise continued their
gradual transition from hunter-gatherers to true farmers. (Ref. 215, 210)

MEXICO, CENTRAL AMERICA AND THE CARIBBEAN

Village life in Mexico continued to show more advanced societies. In the
Oaxaca Valley there were villages with agriculture dominant by 1,300 B.C.
Each village contained ten to twenty houses which were single family units
made of wattle and daub, all opening into a common plaza. By 1,200 in San
Jose Mogote in the same valley, the people began to build large platforms
with limed walls and floors. (Ref. 45, 209) Recent excavations at
Dzibilchaltun in northern Yucatan indicate that this site, which contained
one of the largest of the Mayan cities of the late post-classic period of
A.D.600 or later, had been continuously occupied since 1,500 B.C., so that
in all probability pre-Mayan or Mayan people lived there with an ever
increasing level of civilization for over 2,000 years.

The big story of this period, however, is that of the Olmecs who had
developed a civilization in the humid, low-lying, forest region of southern
Veracruz and western Tabasco by 1,200 B.C. Most authorities agree (with a
few dissenters) that this remarkable society appeared suddenly, without
known antecedents. They were the first Meso-Americans to handle large
masses of stone in monumental sculptures and they may have been
responsible for extending the growth of maize in that area, chiefly by
example or leadership, as they were not the basic inhabitants of the region.
The latter were ethnically Huastec while the Olmecs were apparently an
hereditary ruling class who promoted efficient farming techniques, long
distance trade net-works, large temples and public buildings, fine art, an
official state religion and social stratification. The question of pre-
Columbian contacts with America has been brought up time and again,
particularly regarding this advanced, suddenly appearing Olmec
civilization, but the nature and method of such contact and whether or not it
occurred at all, continues to be debated.

Like the Egyptians, the Olmecs (and later Mayas) wrote in hieroglyphs,
developed a calendar and predicted the movements of planets. These
Central Americans built flat-topped pyramids similar to the ziggurats of
Mesopotamia and decorated those with bas-reliefs showing priests with
Semitic facies and long beards. There is even some botanical evidence of
European contact in that the Olmec successors wore garments from a strain

of cotton that seemed to be a cross between a local, wild type and the long-
staple Egyptian cotton. The latter has thirteen large chromosomes and the
native central and South American cotton, which was short stapled, had
thirteen small chromosomes per cell, but the cotton used for cloth later in
Central America was a hybrid of the two above and contained twenty-six
chromosomes, thirteen small and thirteen large. One has to wonder if it is
just coincidence that these Olmecs developed writing, calendar systems,
pyramids etc. directly at the terminus of the strong Atlantic Canary Current,
flowing from the bulge of Africa through the Canary Islands to the Gulf of
Mexico at the base of the Yucatan peninsula. The swampy, unfavorable
jungle coast in which this civilization developed would suggest that it must
have arrived almost in full bloom, from the sea. The Egyptians and
Phoenicians knew more about astronomy, the key to ocean navigation, than
the later European contemporaries of Columbus and Pizarro, and it is
definitely known that the Phoenicians had settlements all the way down the
Atlantic coast of Morocco by 1,000 B.C. (Ref. 176, 209, 95)

There is also the possibility of still other peoples being the source of early
foreign diffusion to the New World. Heyerdahl (Ref. 95) lists fifty-two
examples of common characteristics seen in the early civilizations of Asia
Minor (Hittite), Cyprus and Crete and the early societies of Central
America and Peru. These include priest-king dynasties in sun-worshipping
administrations, brother-sister royal marriages, fully developed script
writing|[ footnote], paper manufacture from vegetable fibers, stone masonry
of amazing accuracy without the use of mortar and with methods of long
range transportation of gigantic stone blocks, colossal stone statues,
repetitive representations of a bearded man (all true Amerindians of
Siberian origin should be beardless) fighting a giant snake standing on its
tail, a bird-man standing on a plumed serpent (See Hittites, this chapter),
construction of ziggurat types of pyramids, mummification of deceased
royalty, trepanning of skulls, circumcision as a religious ritual, cities of
adobe houses separated by streets and with water and sewer systems, large
scale terrace agriculture with irrigation and fertilizers, similar cotton looms
and garments, identical leather and rope sandals (although the latter were
useless in the tropical swamps), feather crowns used by nobles, similar
organization of standing armies and weaponry, similar tools and utensils,
use of red dyes from mollusks, identical stages of metallurgy with

outstanding gold work, ceramic, polychrome funeral ware, clay models of
daily life, as well as a universal female goddess, stamped seals, curved
wooden figurines, understanding of the "zero" concept, belief in their own
origin in the first century of the 3rd millennium B.C., remarkably high
standard of calendar system and finally the same ocean-going reed ships
with canvas sail hoisted on a double-legged mast. We should also note that
the date of the blooming of the Olmec civilization at 1,200 (+200) B.C. is
the same time often given for the Thera upheaval in the Mediterranean, with
the subsequent possible displacement of the Sea People who roved the
Mediterranean and possibly the Atlantic! Self portraits of the Olmecs on
colossal monoliths have shown two contrasting types - one with Negroid
physiognomy and the other with typical Semitic features with long flowing
beard - all this in the swampland exactly at the end of the Canary Current.
(Ref. 95)

Not in South America.

It is difficult to be certain of the exact physical type of the original Central
and South American Indians, since the populations that came back to life
after the territories became independent of Spain, are now so cross-bred
with Europeans, Chinese and Africans that identification is impossible. The
Chinese factor brings up still another diffusion theory that has been
advanced as late as 1975 by Betty Meggers (Ref. 141) of the Smithsonian
Institute, who believes that the invaders were Chinese from the Shang
Dynasty! As others have, she points out that in Meso-America[footnote] as
late as 2,000 B.C. there was only one village per kilometer in the estuary
systems along the Chiapas-Guatemala coast, but about 1,200 B.C.
something unusual occurred - the sudden appearance of the Olmec
civilization in full flower - and she relates that this event was felt almost
simultaneously over almost all of Mesoamerica. This corresponds in time to
the end of the Shang Dynasty, in China. Meggers feels that one of the most
striking aspects of this new society was the extent of traffic in raw materials
such as obsidian, basalt, magnetite, ilmenite, himatite, serpentine and
jadeite, along with the transportation of the heavy, basalt boulders over long
distances. She points out a great number of shared cultural features of the
Shang and the Olmec societies including:

. writing, stating that a few, often repeated Olmec symbols resemble
Shang characters, and later Maya glyphs were read top to bottom in
Shang fashion (characters of Minoan Linear A of Crete were read
similarly)

2. jade, a primary commodity of long distance trade in both societies

3. batons as a symbol of rank, some with bifurcated tops

4. feline deity, the Shang tiger and the Olmec jaguar both associated with

the earth god and both often drawn lacking a lower jaw

5. worship of mountains

6. cranial deformation, apparently artificially produced in the center of

the head of rulers

7. large groups of scattered villages with central service Centers

8. the construction of rectangular platforms with a north-south

orientation.

When asked why the Mesoamericans did not use the wheel, which was
certainly used by the Shang, she replied, as others have, that the Americans
had no use for the wheel in the absence of roads and draft animals, the
ruggedness of the terrain and the ability of a man to carry more than his
weight in fragile cargo.

Strictly speaking the term "Mesoamerica" includes Guatemala, Belize,
Western Honduras, El Salvador and only southern Mexico, including
Yucatan.

As might be expected, refutations of Meggers' theory soon appeared. David
Grove (Ref. 80) of the University of Illinois says that the society which we
have mentioned as being in the Oaxaca Valley between 1,500 and 1,400
B.C. was a complex culture and perhaps preceded those of the Gulf coast,
and would more apt to be the Olmec ancestor than the Shang. Furthermore,
he says that the jade carving may not even have been Olmec and that the
feline deity idea came up from South America. He also makes the point that
excavations by Coe at San Lorenze on the Gulf coast since 1970 have
revealed significant Olmec cultural levels which predate those at La Venta,
but also pre-Olmec levels, suggesting that the Olmec culture appeared
gradually rather than suddenly. Meggers immediately replied to this in a
publication in 1976 (Ref. 142) stating that twenty-three of the references
she had consulted for her previous publication had been written between

1970 and 1974 and that she was still convinced that Shang refugees were
involved in Central America. The concept of the sudden appearance of the
Olmec society seems to be given another boost by the 1977 publication, The
Encyclopedia of Archeology (Ref. 45) which discusses recent investigations
at San Lorenzo by Yale University, describing that center as having the
longest stratigraphic history of any known Olmec center and that it was
constructed on an artificially raised mass of land, built by the Olmecs to
Support a number of earthern pyramid constructions, plazas and mounds, all
laid out along a north-south axis. The writer indicated that the Olmec
Culture was emerging at this site just in 1,250 B.C. and that most of the
pure Olmec monuments and structures actually date from 1,150 B.C.
onwards.

Whether or not the Olmec civilization was imported or local in origin, there
is no doubt but what this was the mother of all later true civilizations in
Central America, including the Mayan. Probable extensions of the Olmec
into more central Mexico are indicated by recent excavations at
Chalcatzingo in the state of Morelos, about 85 miles southeast of Mexico
City. Radio-carbon datings are from 1,170 B.C. on, and the findings include
bas-relief carvings, platform complexes, etc., all typical of the Olmec style.
It has been postulated that it was a center for controlling the trade of
highland raw materials (obsidian, jade, iron ore and possibly cotton) and
channeling these on to the Gulf coast centers. Contacts with nearby Oaxaca
seem to have stimulated cultural growth there, as well (or was it vice-versa,
as suggested by Grove?). At any rate, within a few centuries, Oaxaca, with
its vastly greater resources and richer agricultural possibilities, with
irrigation, actually began to be the dominant partner. (Ref. 81, 45)

Still another, separate culture is suggested by fairly recent excavations at La
Victoria, Guatemala, where Micheal Coe (Ref. 36) has uncovered iridescent
ceramic pottery as a unique technological feature dating from 1,500 to 800
B.C. This same unusual pottery has been found also in Peru, and it seems
possible that the technology may have gone from Guatemala to Peru where
the earliest dating by radio-carbon is 714 B.C. (+ 200 years). If this
diffusion did occur, it was probably by boat for that is only a 1,300 mile sea
trip and has been shown possible by Heyerdahl's raft voyage and the
presence of ancient sherds on Galapagos Islands, which lie 650 miles off

the Ecuador coast. Other pottery of Middle America was highly developed
but had no local ancestry and Coe suggests that it possibly migrated down
from the Woodland Culture of North America.

SOUTH AMERICA

Several of the immediately preceding paragraphs, particularly those
concerning the possible cultural derivations from pre-Columbian European
migration were applicable to parts of South America as well. We should
now make some observations peculiar to the latter, however. For one thing,
the South Americans did not have writing and why this did not arrive with
other Mid-American cultural features, if there was indeed early contact,
remains an enigma. As far as the illiteracy is concerned, however, we shall
discover later in this text that illiteracy did not hamper the Scandinavian
Vikings or the Mongol Khans. The most spectacular excavation, abandoned
between 1,500 and 1,400 B.C. according to carbon-dating, is El Paraiso,
near Lima, just three miles east of the ocean on the Chillon River valley.
This consists of seven architectural units, of which one has been pretty well
restored. The units were enormous buildings made of two rows of heavy
quarried and roughly-shaped stone blocks cemented with unfired clay and
the gaps filled with rubble. The buildings were of various sizes and shapes,
some a thousand feet long; some almost square 165 by 132 feet. There were
wide stair cases and various halls and rooms, some of which must have
been for storage while others were for festivities and still others living
quarters. A single building would reach thirty feet high. A similar building
complex has also been found higher up in the valley, thirty-six miles from
Lima. Trepanation and deliberate deformation of skulls (see also Mexico,
Central America and the Caribbean) was practiced frequently in this period.
In the last chapter we discussed the "bean planters" of Peru. Archeology
indicates that El] Paraiso and all the bean planters' villages were abandoned
at about the same time, apparently around 1,500 to 1,400 B.C.. No
explanation has been found for this rather sudden and complete
disappearance of this society, and furthermore it appears that the Peruvian
coast probably remained deserted for one to three centuries thereafter.
Skeletons supplied to physical anthropologists by Frederic Engel from the
vicinity of the last of these pre-ceramic, bean eaters show the presence of a

different ethnic group with cross-breeding, as evidenced by the presence of
brachycephalic and mesocephalic skulls in addition to the older
dolichocephalic. One can image that foreign ethnic groups may have
brought a plague that killed the bean planters, but one cannot rule out
severe climatic change as the cause.

Corn growing had appeared in the central Andes, both in the cordillera and
on the coast by 1,500 B.C. Although previously used on the Caribbean
coast, pottery does not seem to have been introduced in western Peru until
about 1,300 B.C. Engle (Ref. 62) had found some in the central Peruvian
lower Andes carbon-dated in the 3,300 to 3,500 B.C. range, so perhaps both
com and pottery were brought over from the eastern slopes of the
mountains. Near Lake Titicaca and in the Cordillera de la Viuda, northeast
of Lima, early types of pottery have been found dating between 1,500 and
1,300 B.C. and this pottery has subsequently been found everywhere in
caves and rock shelters in the upper Andes. The corn raisers and pottery
makers were apparently a new, migrating people, and did not represent
merely a change in culture of the bean planters. Basically by 1,320 B.C.
Americans ate corn as the Europeans ate wheat and the Asians rice.
Seafood, especially shellfish, however, always played an important part of
the Andes peoples’ diets, supplying protein that they lacked in the absence
of meat. A deep refuse midden on the coast of Peru has revealed a
cultivated gourd, used for various artifacts in a fishing culture. These were
only later found in Polynesia. By 1,000 B.C. Peruvians had hallucinogens
and alcohol and were smoking cigars, although the leaf was not tobacco.
(Ref. 62, 95)

Forward to America: 1000 to 700 B.C.
Choose Different Region

. Intro to Era

. Africa

. Central and Northern Asia
. Europe

. The Far East

. The Indian Subcontinent

. The Near East

NOUBWNP

8. Pacific

America: 1000 to 700 B.C.

AMERICA

Back to America: 1500 to 1000 B.C.

NORTH AMERICA

THE FAR NORTH AND CANADA

The Arctic Small Tool tradition continued in the far north. Centered at the
Fraser River delta about 1,000 B.C. and extending from southern Alaska
down to northern California, was the Northwest Coast Tradition. Eskimo
and Old Cordilleran traditions may have contributed to this society which
included hunting and gathering of multiple river and marine foods -
mollusks, salmon, halibut, whale, seal and sea otter. Out of wood the people
made canoes, plank houses, carved household items and wooden slat armor
that may have been derived directly from Asia. (Ref. 45)

THE UNITED STATES

In the United States area, the Burial Mound I period of the Woodland
tradition was typified by the Adena Culture of Ohio, Indiana, Kentucky,
Pennsylvania and West Virginia. Similar areas could be found, however,
from Canada through Minnesota and down to the Louisiana-Texas border.
The characteristic traits were woodland pottery, burial mounds, some as
high as 66 feet, and the beginnings of agriculture. Indians lived in small,
scattered villages with round houses, using wattle for walls and thatch for
roofs. (Ref. 45, 215) In southeast United States an Archaic type of culture
extended throughout the period under review. Studies of remains have been
made in the St. John River of Florida and the Savannah River culture of the
river valley by the same name. The major weapon was a short heavy spear
propelled by a throwing stick while bone fish-hooks, stone net weights and

stone axes have been found. Fiber tempered pottery had been in use in this
area for a long time. (Ref. 258)

And now we must mention the recent and very controversial work of one
Barry Fell. Professor Fell is a teacher of marine biology at Harvard
University, but he also claims an extensive education in ancient Celtic
languages at Edinburgh University and thus professes to be one of the few
who can read ancient scripts in Celtic and other ancient tongues, including
Egyptian, Phoenician and Libyan. It is his assertion that in various parts of
the United States he has found stone inscriptions in those ancient tongues,
seeming to prove that those people visited or even colonized parts of
America in this early period. Of special note, in the time bracket of this
chapter, is his claim of Phoenician inscriptions, written in the Celtic
alphabet, at a site called Mystery Hill, New Hampshire, dated to 800 to 600
B.C. He feels that Goedelic Celts from Spain and Portugal explored and
settled multiple areas in New England during the first millennium B.C. and
that the Punic phase just mentioned undoubtedly followed an original Celtic
occupation. In addition, he has allegedly translated the so-called Pontotoc
stele of Oklahoma as an extract from the "Hymn to Aton", a chant of the
pharaoh Akhnaton, dating from the 13th century B.C., although Fell says
the Oklahoma version can scarcely be older than about 800 B.C., believing
it was the work of an early Iberian colonist writing in the script from the
Cachao-da-Rapa region of northern Portugal. Similarly he writes that the
Davenport stele of Iowa has three separate scripts,- Egyptian hieroglyphics
alongside Iberian and Libyan scripts. Previously these stelae had been
considered as fakes. Fell's interesting hypotheses have not yet been
generally accepted and seem to have been more or less ignored by the
professional archeologists. (Ref. 122)

In the Cochise area of southwest United States a new and more vigorous
strain of corn was imported from Mexico about 1,000 B.C. A new plant, the
red kidney bean, also appeared as the Cochise began to build simple pit-
houses and group themselves together in small villages. As agricultural
activities made easier living, they had time to develop early pottery forms
and soon figurines of people and animals. Findings in the refuse of the
Ventana Cave, some 100 miles from Tucson, have revealed these gradual
changes from hunter to farmer. (Ref. 210)

MEXICO, CENTRAL AMERICA, AND THE CARIBBEAN

In previous chapters we have mentioned the early cultures in both Oaxaca
and Tehuacan which are adjacent areas in southern Mexico. At Tehuacan
the Ajalpan cultural phase ran from 1,500 to 850 B.C. and excavations have
revealed that about 40% of their diet came from agricultural products, 31%
from wild plants and 29% from meat. Various settlements were scattered
along the waterways, with caves for summer occupation to escape the heat.
Population increased rapidly, as agriculture was improved. The next phase,
beginning in 850 B.C., was the Santa Maria, which saw the rise of templed
villages, a figurine cult, and some irrigation. (Ref. 259) The Zapotecs of
Monte Alban (Oaxaca) developed true civilizations with populations in the
tens of thousands, a hierarchy of social classes, a civil service, priesthoods
and specialists in commerce, administration and government.

The Olmecs at the base of the Yucatan peninsula had similar progress and a
distinctive culture dominated by a powerful religion with sky or rain deities
in the form of jaguar people with drooping or snarling feline mouths and
deformed heads. They originated the bar and dot calendar which
traditionally has been credited to the later Mayas and they had fine jade
carvings. As their population increased they continued to live in villages
scattered throughout the forest, but at intervals they built impressive centers
for ceremonial, civic and perhaps commercial use. Each center was the
focal point for the life and culture of some 10,000 people.

Four types of exotic maize found in Guatemala were entirely confined to
the western coast area and all are of South American origin, giving further
suggestion of maritime contact between Ecuador-Peru and Guatemala. Coe
(Ref. 36) has shown that boats, even without the special Peruvian guaras (a
system of center-boards acting as adjustable keels) could sail along the
South American - Middle American coasts, going one direction at certain
times of the year and reversing direction at other seasons, similar to the
monsoon wind system of the Indian Ocean. (Ref. 45, 155, 19, 36)
Additional Notes

SOUTH AMERICA

About 800 B.C. one of the Peruvian states, the Chavin, underwent an
expansion much like the Olmecs did in Central America. This civilization,
with social classes, bureaucracies, and priests, soon spread throughout the
northern half of Peru. Heyerdahl (Ref. 95) writes that this civilization
appears to be a direct extension down the coast from the Olmec be- cause
there were multiple closely related jungle civilizations in a narrow coastal
line, apparently in contact one with the other by sea, while outside this
narrow civilized strip there was nothing but barbarian jungle tribes of
Amerindians throughout Venezuela, Guiana and all of Brazil. And yet there
were many differences between the Chavin and the Olmec' Mesoamerica
had writing, South America did not; Peru had metallurgy by 300 B.C.,
Mexico not until about A.D. 1000. Engel (Ref. 62) does not relate the South
American culture to the Olmecs, but does agree that it apparently developed
rapidly, perhaps in a single generation and occupied most of the area of
present day Peru. Beneath the Chavin layer (archaeological speaking),
occasionally complete "pre-ceramic" villages can be found. The Chavin
traits included low-relief ornaments made on hammered gold leaf, cigars
(but not from tobacco), carved and polished stone vessels and tools
including notched axes and cylindrical maces - some of the stone pieces so
perfect that they seem to be replicas of objects previously made in metal.
The Chavins also used anthracite mirrors and constructed very large
architectural units, some several hundred yards long. The decorative themes
almost all derived from five basic subjects, as follows:

1. African style mouth with thick lips. (See Heyerdahl's ideas under
Central America)

2. Snake-like bodies protruding from demoniacal or human figures.Some
are reminiscent of a crocodile snout, considered sacred in Africa

3. Fangs, shaped like curved swords

4. Crenellations, staircases or geometric forms recalling models of
buildings or fortresses

5. Vessels representing human or demonic heads, animals and plants

The center of the Chavin society was the village of Chavin de Huantar,
probably a temple at 10,000 feet altitude consisting of a massive building
500 feet long in an inter- Andean valley on the west bank of the Mosna
River. Engel thinks that Chavin art may well be the product of foreign

immigration, but from where? Some have said South Asia, some China and
Meggers (Ref. 141) says the Jomon Culture of Japan. Engel is impressed
with the resemblance to Oaxaca and Vera Cruz. Las Haldas became another
great Chavin complex, measuring 1,220 feet long by 260 feet wide and
covering 7 1/2 acres, with a platform overhanging the sea at a height of 130
feet. Chavin influence reached as far south as the Mantaro basin in central
Peru, as indicated by pottery found there. (Ref. 255)

Some would date the beginning of the Tiahuanaco Society to 800 B.C. (Ref.
255) but since this date remains very debatable and since the full
development of this society was reached only later, we shall defer
discussion of it until the 5th century B.C.

In the 2nd millennium and this part of the 1st millennium B.C. a drier
climate reduced the Amazonian forests to scattered refuges and during this
period migration of various tribes may have been relatively easy. The
resulting spread may help to explain the multiplicity of languages spoken
there since then. (Ref. 256)

Note:Habitation began at Colha in Belize about 900 B.C. This was later to
become a great tool production center because of adjacent deposits of chert
nodules, as described in the Additional Notes of the 1st century C.E. (Ref.
304)

Forward to America: 700 to 601 B.C.
Choose Different Region

. Intro to Era

. Africa

. Central and Northern Asia
. Europe

. The Far East

. The Indian Subcontinent

. The Near East

NOU BRWN PR

8. Pacific

America: 700 to 601 B.C.

AMERICA

Back to America: 1000 to 700 B.C.

NORTH AMERICA

THE FAR NORTH AND CANADA

The Arctic Small tradition continued in the far north as previously
described.

Indian life throughout Canada was essentially as recorded in the last
chapter.

THE UNITED STATES

Here again, as in the last chapter, we run into the controversial theories of
Barry Fell (Ref. 65). Various rock inscriptions of New England, some
originally found years ago[footnote] and others just recently, as at Union,
New Hampshire, and on Monhegan Island off the coast of Maine, have now
been interpreted by Fell as being Tartessian Punic, recording arrivals of
Phoenician ships from Spain. It is his hypothesis that these voyagers, dated
from 700 to 600 B.C. were probably not explorers but merchants, trading
with already settled New England Celts'

One such inscription was described and recorded from Mount Hope Bay,
Bristol, Rhode Island, in 1,780 by Ezra Stiles, later president of Yale
College

In the midwest, the Burial Mound I period of the Adena variation of the
Woodland tradition continued. Here again Barry Fell introduces new
controversy when he states that excavation of some of the mounds have

revealed copper and bronze tablets, pottery, figurines, etc. showing
unmistakable similarities to ancient Phoenician constructions. He says these
are located in West Virginia, lowa and Ohio, along major rivers. Other
students of the Adena Culture mention only stone ornaments and engraved
slabs in these mounds, although the later Hopewell mounds (see 3rd century
B.C.) certainly had various metals, but of local origin. In the southwest
United States the San Pedro phase of the Cochise Culture continued as a
desert society, with increasing population and improvements in farming and
other skills. (Ref. 65, 215, 45)

MEXICO, CENTRAL AMERICA, AND THE CARIBBEAN

The Olmec civilization, now some 600 years old, reached the height of its
development with a center at La Venta, Mexico. Every village was linked in
an elaborate network of trade up and down the valleys and between the
highlands and the coasts. Salt, maize, obsidian, oyster shells, stingray
spines, sharks' teeth, conch and turtle shells were all traded widely. The
Olmecs were not only great sculptors but also carvers of jade, from which
they made statuettes, jewellery and axes. To judge from their art, the
Olmecs had two contrasting ethnic types, one remarkably Negroid, with
thick lips, broad noses and round faces and the other strikingly Semitic with
sharp profiles, hooked noses, narrow faces and lips and pronounced beards,
usually shown as either square or pointed goatees. Neither of these types
would seem to have come across the Bering Strait. (Please also see pages
124 to 127 and the chart which follows the next section in this chapter). The
Mayan calendar indicates activity in Central America by 613 B.C. but little
actual knowledge of those people is available for another century or two.
(Ref. 95)

SOUTH AMERICA

The Chavin civilization continued in northern Peru and perhaps the
Tiahuanaco existed in the highlands on the Bolivian border, but we shall
omit discussion of this group until the 5th century B.C. As in Central

America, there are many equivocal findings suggesting the possibility of
multiple origins of South American peoples, rather than a single ancestral
strain from Bering Strait migrants. Some of the features which contribute to
this confusion are now listed.

NOTE: Insert SPECIAL SECTION, UNEXPLAINED FEATURES OF
NATIVE AMERICANS

Forward to America: 600 to 501 B.C.

America: 600 to 501 B.C.

AMERICA

Back to America: 700 to 601 B.C.

NORTH AMERICA

THE FAR NORTH AND CANADA

There was no real change in the human condition in North America at this
time. The Arctic Small Tool tradition is usually divided into two stages with
what has been called the Dorset Stage emerging at about 600 B.C. This was
an harpoon based hunting culture extending all across the far north.

THE UNITED STATES

The Adena Woodlland Culture thrived in the east and the middle west of the
United States and the influence of the Adena burial customs, religion and
art can be identified over a large area, including Chesapeake Bay and New
York state. In the 1880s Professor Cyrus Thomas surveyed over 2,000
mound sites and collected over 4,000 specimens of this and the later
Hopewell Culture. The San Pedro phase of the Cochise Culture continued
in the southwest. (Ref. 189, 215)

MEXICO, CENTRAL AMERICA, AND THE CARIBBEAN

In the Olmec center at La Venta a clay pyramid 103 feet high was erected
and surrounded by four colossal stone heads. At Monte Alban, Mexico, one
can still see rows of carvings with Olmec features. At Tikal, Quatemala,
pottery has been found dating to 600 B.C. similar to south American pottery

of the same date, suggesting that trade existed between the two areas. About
500 B.C., however, the Olmec people seem to have collapsed and
disappeared, perhaps passing on their knowledge to the Mayas who began
to occupy some of the same territory. Archeological finds establish a human
presence in Vera Cruz as early as 5,600 B.C. and this may have been from
ancient times a thorough-fare for migration of Huastec and Olmecs along
the coastal plain. (Ref. 176, 155, 236)

The zero point of the Mayan calendar corresponds to our 3,113 B.C. and
brings up the interesting questions as to the ultimate origin of those peoples
and how they were able to triumph over the jungle to establish a type of
civilization. The most likely hypothesis is that they were agriculturalists
originally and that they moved in from adjacent river-estuarine lowlands.
The bulk of archaeological data points to an original incursion of the
lowlands during the first half of this 1st millennium B.C., but the earliest
ceramics from Tikal and UJaxactun date to about 600 B.C. There may have
been two stages in the development of the Maya society, with the first stage
characterized by the dissemination of riverine settlements from the tropical
Lowlands of the Pacific and Gulf Coasts in the general area of the Isthmus
of Tehuantepec and the second stage occurring when Pre-classic groups
abandoned the rivers and moved into the interior. This later stage appears to
be linked to the beginnings of Mayan civilization. The change to the interior
habitat involved many problems not the least of which was the obtaining of
drinking water. The solution to this problem was apparently found in the
construction of artificial reservoirs in impermeable clays. Fed by artificially
constructed drainage systems they allowed for the storage of millions of
gallons of water. For carbohydrates, the relatively small crops of maize that
could be raised with the slash and burn method, was supplemented by the
ramon, a tree of the fig family which produces dense carbohydrate seeds in
tremendously large quantities. Storage places for these seeds have also been
found. Now shut off from river proteins, deer hunting was of importance, a
fact confirmed from the examination of hidden contents from Tikal. As the
Pulestons (Ref. 261) have pointed out, the necessity of organizing labor to
construct the large public reservoirs may well have been a catalyst for the
development of social stratification and the developing concept of a state;
and the utilization of the ramon would have allowed stable settlements with
the release of much male labor for use in various other channels.

SOUTH AMERICA

The Chavin civilization continued in Peru throughout this century but then
about 500 B.C. their cities were rather suddenly abandoned| footnote]. Some
writers say that Paracas developed its own individual type of pottery in the
south at this time, but Engel (Ref. 62) does not date Paracas I until another
300 years. Marvin Allison (Ref. 3) has found multiple mummies from
various Peruvian and Chilean coastal burials, some dating to 600 B.C., with
tuberculosis, especially of the bones and joints and he believes this must
have been a common disease of the western coast. The first known densely
populated centers on the north coast of South America date from 600 B.C.
to 150 B.C. and have been called the "Salinar phase" by archaeologists.
(Ref. 255)

The National Geographic Society (Ref. 255) reported in 1982 that this
society lasted until 300 B.C.

In the light of Barry Fells 's hypotheses concerning possible European and
Middle East voyagers to the new world in ancient times, it is of interest that
a stone inscription in Phoenician script was allegedly discovered in
Parahyba Province, Brazil, in 1886 and a translation published in 1939
indicated that it had been written by Canaanites of Sidon who had left the
Red Sea area in 536 B.C. (the 19th year of the reign of Hiram) with ten
ships, sailing along the coast of Africa for two years, under the orders of
Necho, pharoah of Egypt. The writers note that they became separated from
their flagship and were carried far away and landed on this unknown
(Brazilian) coast. When first put forth this finding and translation was
declared a forgery, but more recently it has been accepted as genuine by
many authorities. (Ref. 176) The south Atlantic ocean currents coming from
the African Cape could easily result in this drift. Ornate ceramics decorated
with animal and bird figures were characteristic of the Brazilian Barrancoid
tradition of this and many adjacent centuries (Ref. 255)

Forward to America: 500 to 401 B.C.
Choose Different Region

1. Intro to Era
2. Africa
3. Central and Northern Asia

4, Europe

5. The Far East

6. The Indian Subcontinent
7. The Near East

8. Pacific

America: 500 to 401 B.C.

AMERICA

Back to America: 600 to 501 B.C.

NORTH AMERICA

The far northern Eskimo Culture, the midwestern Woodland Adena
Cultures and the southwestern Cochise traditions continued as before. In
southern Utah's Barrier Canyon (now Horseshoe Canyon) on the Colorado
River just before it goes into Arizona, rock paintings and figurines dating
back at least to 500 B.C. have been found. They may date much earlier.
Barry Fell (Ref. 65) has further astounding hypotheses dating to this
century.

For example, he has identified a stone temple at South Woodstock,
Vermont, to be of Celtic construction, dated after 433 B.C. and like others,
oriented with its long axis at compass bearing 123 degrees, which is the
horizon azimuth of the rising sun on the December 22 winter solstice,
important in the Celtic religion. He says that many monoliths characteristic
of any Celtic landscape are found in New England. And still more - Fell
states that the Zuni tongue in Arizona is basically Libyan, taken from the
limited, racy and colloquial vocabulary of Libyan navy men sailing in this
century from ships of Tarshish or Carthage. He insists that the basic Zuni
language of today is similar to Coptic, with borrowed elements from
Spanish and English. One of the problems involved in accepting this is that
most authorities do not think the Zuni existed as a definite people at this
early time, and that they developed from the Mogollon Culture much later.
(Ref. 195, 65)

MEXICO AND CENTRAL AMERICA

The middle America "ball-game", a curious, violent cross between soccer,
volley-ball and pelota seemed to have some religious significance and
appears to have been developed by the Olmecs, although it became popular
all over middle America by 400 B.C. [footnote] As noted in the previous
chapter the Maya probably started their differentiation from other primitive
peoples in the scrub-covered lowlands of northern Yucatan and Guatemala's
Peten about 2,500 B.C.[footnote], slowly struggling against the invading
forest. Clearing land was difficult and was done chiefly by burning. Their
staple food was maize, of ten with several varieties grown in the same field.
Although their land was relatively infertile, except along the river flood
plains, it was rich in building materials - limestone rock, sandstone and
volcanic rock as well as hard stones. Up until 300 B.C. is known as the
formative period of Mayan history, and there is no doubt but what much of
their advanced culture was transferred from the preceding Olmec Society.
(Ref. 176, 263)

See this same section in the 10th century C.E.

Recent excavations indicate a Maya presence at Cuello, Belize at 2,400
B.C. (Ref. 263)

Costa Rica, on the narrow isthmus leading to Panama and South America
has a long prehistory, but available artifacts date chiefly from 500 B.C.
onwards. In a new chronology for Central America proposed by a seminar
in 1980, the time from 1,000 B.C. to A.D. 500 in the Costa Rican story
would be Period IV. At about 500 B.C. the Guanacaste-Nicoya and some of
the Central Highlands-Watershed region were influenced by Mesoamerican
culture, with production of the same red-on-buff pottery and a tendency for
all settlements to prefer level, fertile land suitable for agriculture. (Ref. 265)

SOUTH AMERICA

The complete disappearance of the Chavin society of Peru in this century
was so sudden that a cataclysm is suggested. It may have resulted from a
climatic crisis in that it is known that the sea level oscillated as much as 23
feet in this time period. Engel (Ref. 62) states that in the north central part
of Peru there were two new societies after about 500 B.C., the Mochica and
the Gallinazo, both in an area no more than about 240 miles long. South of

there from the Huarmey Valley to the Lurin, south of Lima, with an area of
almost 1,200 square miles there appears an archeological gap of about
1,000 years.

Still farther south the Paracas Society appeared at the end of the Chavin
time or after a short gap and the very far south has not really been studied.

The exact time of origin of the Mochican society is disputed and even
radio-carbon dates are somewhat confusing. Engel feels that it existed from
this 5th century B.C. until at least A.D. 100 and was contemporary with the
Gallinazos with whom the Mochicans fought. The chief phenonemon of
Mochica is a classical pottery, handsome, of various shapes, decorated and
some of it pink-fired. On some pottery the paintings show circumcised
prisoners shackled together, but none of the Mochicas are shown nude.
Since circumcision was essentially unknown in early South America, from
whence did the prisoners come?

Ceramic portrait paintings of many classes of men are found, including
wairiors, farmers, priests, etc.. The warriors may have arrived later,
representing a new, conquering group. Some of the Mochican sites
contained metal objects but the sites had been looted long before any
professional archeologists arrived. (Please also see South America in the
2nd century B.C. for Barry Fell's thoughts).

In nearby Viru Valley lived the Gallinazo, named after a vulture, with a
great building society superimposed on an age old strata of previous
peoples. One ziggurat, 82 feet high, obviously had religious significance.
Most sites have been looted centuries ago, as they contained gold objects,
and finally the valley seems to have been conquered anyway by the
Mochicans.

On a treeless, barren plain 12,500 feet above sea level in central Peru, there
existed perhaps at this time, the Tiahuanaco civilization[ footnote], similar
in every way to the Olmec except in the drastic differences in climate and
geology. The similarities of this society at Lake Titicaca and the Olmecs
with the Old World cultures are many, including a domesticated, small dog,
with no wild progenitor in America, the use of hybrid long staple cotton and
many other botanical features. Building materials were treated differently

than in any other part of the Andes, with monolithic blocks weighing a
hundred tons cut with geometric precision. The blocks show mortised joints
and recesses in which metal hinges could have been placed to swing
monumental doors. Multiple temples were built and at least one building
500 feet in length was included.

It has been very difficult for archeologists to accurately date the Tiahuanaco
Society for many reasons. Most of the great areas have been looted
extensively over the centuries and at present all excavation is restricted by
the Bolivian government. Engel (Ref. 62) has obtained a carbon-dating of
the deepest strata of the city proper of about 2,000 years ago, but pottery
fragments at that level already were decorated in high classical Tiahuanaco
style, suggesting that this was late in the history of the people. We are
empirically starting the discussion of Tiahuanaco in this century although it
may have originated either earlier or later by several hundred years.

Forward to America: 400 to 301 B.C.
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. Intro to Era

. Africa

. Central and Northern Asia
. Europe

. The Far East

. The Indian Subcontinent

. The Near East

. Pacific

CONMDUBRWN FE

America: 400 to 301 B.C.

AMERICA

Back to America: 500 to 401 B.C.

NORTH AMERICA

The Dorset Arctic, the Adena variety of the Woodlands and the southwest
Cochise traditions continued as described in the preceding two chapters.

MEXICO, CENTRAL AMERICA, AND THE CARIBBEAN

In the Central American tropical forests of Guatemala and Honduras the
Mayan Culture continued to develop with an increasing complexity
indicated by the construction of mound platforms for temples and palaces.
Recent excavations at Cuello, a ceremonial center of northern Belize which
may have had its origins as far back as 2,400 B.C., have revealed evidence
of what was probably a barbaric religious ritual of about 400 B.C. Twenty
skeletons were found, some complete but others with detached skulls lying
beside lopped-off limbs. These were lying in the center of a massive, raised
platform some 200 feet square and standing 12 feet high. (Ref. 263)
Another city on the Mayan trade route along the eastern coast of the
Yucatan peninsula in modern Belize was Cerros. This community has been
remarkable well preserved although it was abandoned many centuries ago.
For three hundred years, beginning in about 350 B.C. it existed as a modest
fishing and trading village. In the beginning the inhabitants lived on or
close to the current ground level or on low clay platforms. In later centuries
marked changes occurred in the manner of living and we shall refer to these
in subsequent chapters. (Ref. 264) The mound platforms of the early
Central American people initiated the building of pyramids which was a
virtual obsession for the next 2,000 years. Mexico alone may have some
100,000 as not uncovered. (Ref. 45, 176)

SOUTH AMERICA

The people of northern Peru were melting gold and copper by 300 B.C.
Since the melting point of these metals is a little more than 2,200 degrees
Fahrenheit, one wonders how they reached such temperatures. The later
chroniclers of the Spanish say the Indians blew on the fire and installed
their hearths on hilltops where they had the help of the wind.

Fine Columbian metallurgy (using the lost wax method) was to later far
surpass in quality that of either Peru or Mexico. (Ref. 62)

The highlight of the Paracas Culture in southern Peru was embroidery. "As
in the earlier Chavin Culture, the stylized feline animal played an important
part in the decoration of their pottery as well as their

textiles.” [footnote |Hybrid birds, beasts, fish, snakes and men also moved up
and down the fabrics in rows, as cotton and alpaca wool were fabricated
into mantles and other fabrics, with as many as 190 different shades of
colors. Many of their ceramic vessels were characteristic Chavin steep-
mouthed jars. Mummies from major necropolises on the Paracas peninsula,
carbon-14 dated to about 300 B.C., have been found near large quantities of
hardwood guara, a type of centerboard used in the navigation of sail-
carrying rafts, attesting to extensive maritime activity. The physical
attributes of mummy bodies differed markedly from those of known South
American Indians; the mummies being for one thing much taller and having
different skull shapes.

Quotation from Taylor and Belcher, Ref. 10, page 85.

All studies of Tiahuanaco skulls have also shown a mixture of skull shapes,
with the cranial indices varying from 71.97 to 93.79 and hair color and
shape varying also. Interesting features of the tremendous Tiahuanaco
Statues are the deep-set eyes and straight noses, quite different from the
round Chavin eyes and the deer-shaped ones at Mochica. Most statues call
to mind the ones on Easter Island in the south Pacific. (Ref. 3, 62) At one
point Tiahuanaco reproduced an art theme typical of the old Chavin style
with serpent-like animals protruding from the bodies of armed figures with
animal heads, sometimes feline and sometimes that of an eagle. A hot-land
item, the feathered shield, has also been found in the Jojo Province of the
eastern shore of Lake Titicaca and the greatest number of Tiahuanaco

stones has also been found in this area. Some archeologists have described
three phases of pottery decoration in that society. (Ref. 95, 62, 10)

Regarding the eastern side of the South American continent, we might
mention that Barry Fell (Ref. 122) writes that he has translated rock
inscriptions written in the ancient Ogam Celtic alphabet in caves near the
upper reaches of the Paraguay River, these dating probably between 500
and 500 B.C. The writing allegedly describes a visit by mariners from
Cadiz, Spain and the language supposedly was a variant of Phoenician
called "Iberian". Others have described a stone found on a Brazilian
plantation with alleged Phoenician writing[ footnote].

This interpretation has been backed by Ladislau Netto, Director of the
National Museum in Rio as well as by Cyrus Gordon of Brandeis
University in Massachusetts, but is scoffed at by European scholars.

Forward to America: 300 to 201 B.C.
Choose Different Region

. Intro to Era

. Africa

. Central and Northern Asia
. Europe

. The Far East

. The Indian Subcontinent

. The Near East

. Pacific

CONDMUBWNEFH

America: 300 to 201 B.C.

AMERICA

Back to America: 400 to 301 B.C.

NORTH AMERICA

In the far north the Dorset phase of the Arctic Small Tool tradition
continued. This Dorset Society was to last overall, some sixteen centuries.
(Ref. 189)

By this century, for reasons unknown, the Adena Culture had faded and
almost disappeared, but a new North American Indian culture made its
appearance in Ilinois and soon spread to Ohio. Named the "Hopewell" after
an Illinois mound group, this eventually spread widely over a huge portion
of the eastern United States, stretching from the Mississippi River to
Florida. Although the people probably cultivated corn and other crops,
hunting and gathering were still of critical importance. They built elaborate
earthworks, some for defensive purposes and some as burial mounds. They
worked in copper, mica, obsidian, soap-stone and wood as well as clay.
Copper and mica cutouts in various designs were seen in effigy pipes and
occasional pottery. Rock carvings of satyr masks almost identical with some
of Carthaginian occupied Sardinia and Carthaginian coins of the 4th and 3rd
centuries B.C. have allegedly been found along the Arkansas River both
above and below Wichita, Kansas, according to Barry Fell, and he feels
positive that the Carthaginians traded on the Atlantic side of America for
lumber, gold and furs. (Ref. 45, 66)

In the southwest, in southern New Mexico and eastern Arizona, Coshise
Indians continued their agricultural, hunting and gathering society, but with
still more improvement in the type of corn, squash and beans, so that a true
farming community had materialized.

MEXICO AND CENTRAL AMERICA

As the Mayan Society began to flourish we must not fail to remember that
the Olmecs left a heritage of religious beliefs, artistic symbolism and other
cultural traditions to all subsequent Mexican people. Recent excavations
near Coba, Mexico, on the Yucatan peninsula have been called the Late Pre-
classic Maya period by Mexican archeologists, with a dating going back to
300 B.C. and with a peak at A.D. 200. The Mayas excelled in astronomy
and developed a very complex system of chronology (perhaps originating
with the Olmecs) which was remarkably exact in its calculation. For
example, they calculated that 405 full moons occurred in a period of 11,900
days, while today astronomers make it 11,959,888 days, thus differing by 1
day every 292 years or less than five minutes a year! They recorded their
language in a complex hieroglyphic script composed partly of ideograms
representing whole words or ideas and partly of phonetic symbols for
sounds, much as did ancient Egyptian and modern Japanese. Scholars are
still working on decoding this language, which is still spoken by some two
million people. (Ref. 176)

In Costa Rica this Middle to Late Period IV can be viewed as a time of
contact with more developed Mesoamerican cultures. Superb human and
zoomorphic ceramic effigies were produced at this time. In the Central
Highlands-Atlantic Watershed, household remains also resemble
Mesoamerican patterns; small, rectangular houses are sometimes
accompanied by bell-shaped storage pits. The pottery was adorned with any
number of tropical reptiles with the color chiefly red on buff. (Ref. 265)
The archeological record of western Panama begins at about 300 B.C. and
includes ceramics found in the Rio Chiriqui rockshelters. They were similar
to those described in Costa Rica. We shall note in later chapters that this
was an area where big chiefdoms developed. (Ref. 266)

SOUTH AMERICA

There were apparently any number of small, localized although prosperous
societies in various parts of the Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia complex in this
century. About this time a numerous tribe arrived in the Chilca Basin just

south of present day Lima, building clusters of dwelling houses made of
conical, hand molded clay blocks, a temple and store-house-fortress. Their
temple resembled a Polynesian "marae", and large and impressive adobe
pyramids were constructed. There were perhaps 2,500 people to a village,
living on corn, sea-food and potatoes of cultivated species, the first in Peru.
Seven Lapa Lapa| footnote] systems with some 10,000 structures made of
heavy stone have been mapped out. They had some traits in common with
the Nazcas who lived farther south and were their contemporaries - such
things as pipes with ten holes, triangular obsidian projectile points and
certain types of dishes. (Ref. 255, 62)

A term Engel (Ref. 62) uses for the Chilca Basin dwellers.

The Paracas ceremonial center on the south coast of Peru faded at about 200
B.C. although there appears some confusion about dates in regard to the
Paracas-Nazca time periods. Fell (Ref. 66) reports carbon dating of the
Paracas in the middle south Peru area back about the 5th century B.C.,
while Engel (Ref. 62) makes it much later, although he agrees that what he
calls "Paracas I" was gone before 200 B.C.[footnote] This territory was
originally part of the Chavin society area and some Chavin decorations
were continued. There now appeared a recently identified Vicus Culture
which existed at the bend of the Maranon River almost on the present
Ecuador-Peru border. This appears to have begun about 220 B.C. and lasted
for approximately five hundred years. From the artistic standpoint these
people are identified by intricate sheet- gold figures. Nose and ear
ornaments employing both gold and silver were developed there and carried
on even into much later Inca days. (Ref. 45, 124)

In 1982 the National Geographic Society (Ref. 255) dated the Paracas
Period as 550 to 200 B.C.

The high culture Tiahuanaco made small micriolithic projectile points of
obsidian, quartz or flint, and bolas used for catching camelids were typical
of the area. Some Tiahuanacoid pottery of the era shows an eye on figures
that became Nazcoid or almond shaped, suggesting a hybridization of these
two cultures. The jewels of Tiahuanaco were very fine and when faces were
carved the noses were aquiline rather than straight, as shown on the winged
god of the famed Gateway of the Sun, and as found on the gods of Easter
Island. (Ref. 62)

At Chiripa, on the shores of Lake Titicaca there are interesting excavated
architectural styles dating to about 300 B.C., where the walls were built
with unfired clay bricks painted red, green and white, resting on a pebble
base. All walls were double with the space between apparently used for
storage bins and some as stables for guinea pigs . The roofs must have been
of straw. The attached graves showed malachite beads and hammered, thin
sheets of gold. The pottery had a stylized decoration using Greek-like step
patterns and other geometric forms.

Forward to America: 200 to 101 B.C.
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COONDMDUBRWNEFE

America: 200 to 101 B.C.

AMERICA

Back to America: 300 to 201 B.C.

NORTH AMERICA

THE FAR NORTH AND CANADA

There was no interruption of the Dorset Society previously described in the
Arctic north. In southeastern Canada, particularly in the region of Nova
Scotia, the Micmac Indians eventually had script writing. Although usually
credited to work of later French priests, Fell (Ref. 65, 66) gives some
evidence indicating an east Libyan origin from near the Egyptian border
where Herodotus said that an Adrymachid tribe had adopted Egyptian
manners. He dates the contact of Libyan sailors with the Micmacs to this
century but only further investigation can really settle this one way or
another.

We have recorded previously that some authorities feel that Asian
migrations to North America via a Pacific northern route continued by boat
down to about 2,000 B.C. If true, then over the vast expanse of some 20,000
to 30,000 years a great variety of people could have made this trek. We
know for certain that the Aleuts and the Eskimos are separate from true
Amerindians and that the Athabascans of central, north Canada were
relatively late comers, different in culture and language from most other
Indians. Now we shall describe still another group of people, occupying the
far western shore and the off-shore islands of Canada, who appear to be
different from all other early North American inhabitants in many ways and
who developed in an isolated situation along the Canadian waterways, shut
off from inland Canada by precipices and wild mountains. These are the
Haida of the Queen Charlotte Islands and the Kwakiutl of northwestern
Vancouver Island, both ranking among the tallest people in the world. They

appear to be related to the Salish or Flathead Indians who later inhabited
northern Montana, apparently coming down gradually from Bella Coola
and British Columbia. These people are dolichocephalic while most
American Indians are brachycephalic; their complexions are fair and their
hair of ten soft and brown, rather than Mongolian coarse and black. The
earliest European visitors to the western Canadian islands - Cook, Dixon
and Vancouver - all emphasized those features. In addition those northwest
coast people of ten had strong mustaches and beards, in contrast to the
usually totally beardless Amerindians. Thus they have many Caucasian
features and are physically identical to true Polynesians. Their homesites in
the Canadian islands probably represent way-stations on the trip these
people made from some place in Asia in ancient times to the eventual
destination of some of them, in Polynesia. If they are related to Malaysians
it is a very distant relationship and the two physically dissimilar peoples
must have separated from an original stem in very ancient days, before the
Malayasians even migrated down into the peninsula now bearing their
name. The theme of the unity of the northwest American Indians and the
Polynesians will be further developed in subsequent chapters.

THE UNITED STATES

The expanding Hopewell sphere extended from the Alleghenies to the
western border of the Mississippi alley, north to the Great Lakes, south to
Florida and the Gulf States. Their craftsmen obtained obsidian for knives
and arrowheads from the Yellowstone area of Wyoming as well as other
rocks from Montana and North Dakota. We have not emphasized it
previously but the Woodland Culture with its burial mounds, pipes, stone
and copper gorgets, wooden carvings, pottery effigies and earrings existed
in the south as early as 1,000 B.C. onto this 2nd century B.C. and beyond.
Burial mounds up to forty feet in height are scattered throughout the south.
(Ref. 267)

We do not like to belabor a controversial point but is perhaps worth
mentioning that Fell (Ref. 66) insists that Celt-Iberians were scattered
throughout the eastern United States by this period and that coins found in
quantity in Ohio were local copies of ancient bronze coins of Evia, an old

Portuguese city. This entire question of European and/or North African
visitors in America at a much earlier time than heretofore ever mentioned in
classical histories is an interesting one. Although Fell and Thor

Heyerdahl[ footnote], both of whom have written extensively on this subject
independently, have not obtained any significant agreement from others in
the field, this does not necessarily mean that they are in error. We must
remember that in the latter part of the 19th century the initial reports on the
extensive and now famous prehistoric cave paintings and engravings from
parts of Spain and Les Eyzies region of France were met with complete
skepticism by the International Congress of Prehistoric Archeology and
Anthropology. (Ref. 215, 66, 130)

Heyerdahl's theories apply only to Central and South America, not the
United States.

In the southwestern United States where the corners of Arizona, New
Mexico, Utah and Colorado join, the so-called Basket-maker I period of the
Anasazi Indian Culture was in progress but few details are available from
this century. Farther south the San Pedro Culture, apparently a modification
of the Cochise, continued to be viable. (Ref. 45)

MEXICO, CENTRAL AMERICA, AND THE CARIBBEAN

In Mexico the Teotihuacan city-state continued to grow. The late Pre-
Classic period of Central America continued with progressive population
growth. The Maya in the Peten area subsisted on corn, beans and squash, as
they cleared land by a slash and burn system. There were no large
ceremonial centers as yet.

SOUTH AMERICA

The Vicus Culture flourished in northern Peru. At Lake Titicaca, on the
border of present day Peru and Bolivia, on a bleak 13,000 feet plateau in the
middle of the previously described Tiahuanaco Culture area there now was
built abut 200 B.C. the definitive city of Tiahuanaco. Its remaining stones

give evidence of a colossal style of building, with formidable
mathematically ordered walls and imposing massive stone steps. A giant
stone idol, 24 feet high, was excavated in 1932 by an American
archeological team under W.C. Bennett. Another idol, only 8 feet tall but of
a completely different style, although also of red sandstone, was found
beside it. Shrunken human heads have been found, suggesting the bloody
cult of head-hunting and/or human sacrifices. A Bolivian scholar, Ponce
Sangines, believes this culture lasted from 200 B.C. to A.D. 1,200 with
perhaps five buried cities, one often overlapping another in the
archeological strata. Lake Titicaca is the highest navigable lake in the world
and its largest island, the Island of the Sun, has hills with ancient crop-
growing terraces and beneath its waters are high walls and paved paths. The
lake, covering 3,200 square miles now is thought to have once reached the
walls of the ancient city of Tiahuanaco, the runs of which now lie 25 miles
away in Bolivia. The city may have been basically a religious or meeting
center, as the large public buildings could hold thousands of people. There
seems to have also been suburbs were craftsmen, weavers, smiths and
farmers lived in mud-brick houses. Potatoes and corn were grown as they
are even today. The stones which made up the large public buildings and
walls appear to have been brought from quarries between 60 and 200 miles
away and the method of transport brings up the same questions and possible
answers that have been issued about the great stones of Stonehenge, the
European megaliths and the statues of Easter Island. Some American
prehistorians have suggested that the Tiahuanaco people simply fused
together all the upper Andes societies that had been fragmented since the
end of the Chavin Culture.

Heyerdahl (Ref. 95) quotes many of the very earliest Spanish chroniclers as
they have recorded the natives' legends of the great pre-Inca past. In these
there is the recurring theme suggesting immigrants from across the ocean.
Lake Titicaca is given as a possible beginning point for Inga Viracocha or
the composite Con-Tici-Viracocha, a bearded deity who "brought his people
fro the sea." Legends among the Chimu have this same deity arriving by sea
long the coast much farther north. One of the statues unearthed by W.C.
Bennett in 1932 was that of Con-Tica-Viracocha in Tiahuanaco, complete
with beard and long girdled robe, decorated with an horned serpent and two
pumas, symbols of the Supreme God in both Mexico and Peru.

At about this same time of 200 B.C.[footnote] and running to about A.D.
900 there appeared in the north of Peru the mysterious Mochica Culture
complete with pottery and clay figurines and musical instruments and
clothing resembling that of classical times in the Mediterranean. The Moche
have sometimes been called "the Greeks of South America." Fell believes
that they derived from a Libyan colony which was originally in the
southwest Unites States because of similarity of some dragon-ship art work
and other features found in ancient Nevada and California desert sites. He
believes extensions of Maui's voyages (Please see The Pacific: 300 to 201
B.C.) included the southwestern Unites States and that visitors from there to
northern Peru account for the civilization of the Moche.

Engel (Ref. 62) dates this earlier, between 500 and 400 B.C.

Meanwhile on the middle south coast the society which Engel (Ref. 62)
calls Paracas II developed as a coastal society with limited architecture,
some use of copper and gold and a very advanced state of weaving. All
skulls were deformed to a pear-shape and many were trepanned. Some
elements suggest that they came up the coast from Chile and their many
identified weapons indicate terrific battles. The Nazcas were direct
successors of the Paracas and they too remained a coastal tribe, although
with a far different social system. The transition was apparently somewhat
gradual and although the Nazca Society may have taken shape in this
century, it did not blossom until long after. (Ref. 176, 66, 95, 62)

Forward to America: 100 to 0 B.C.
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COONDMDUBRWN FE

America: 100 B.C. to 0

AMERICA

Back to America: 200 to 101 B.C.

NORTH AMERICA

THE FAR NORTH AND CANADA

All across northern Canada as far north as Ellesmere Island and northern
Greenland and down to the northern shores of Hudson Bay and the east side
of the Ungava Peninsula, the Dorset people continued to thrive. They
carved figures of animals from walrus's tusks and bone, decorating them
with peculiar outer marks which Schledermann (Ref. 189) has called an
outline of animals' skeletons. In the pictures he shows, however, it hard to
identify true skeletal structures and the marks are more reminiscent to this
writer of the lunar notations of ancient Europeans described previously by
Marchack. (Ref. 139) The northwest American Indians of the Canadian
waterways continued in active existence at this time.

THE UNITED STATES

According to Barry Fell's original hypothesis North American trade from
southern Europe ceased after the conquest of Brittany (55 B.C.) and the
Battle of Actium (31 B.C.) because the Romans had no navy and needed
none and the memory of America was lost[footnote]. In his latest book of
1980, however, Fell (Ref. 66) revises this markedly, having allegedly
recently been deluged with finding of European (Roman) coins and rock
inscriptions in a great variety of places in North America. Rock engravings
which he believes to be copies of multiple coins minted locally in Spain
about 20 B.C. in imitation of Roman coins of the same era and bearing
portraits of Caesar Augustus, have been found at Castle Gardens, Wyoming.

Fell is convinced that this Wyoming site was actually an early bank and
center of trade with customers using Celtiberian Gaedelic as their main
language. He hypothesizes that people of Wyoming traded with Celtiberians
and their Indian wives, after the latter had migrated across the continent
from New England to British Columbia and then to northwest United
States. West Arkansas and Oklahoma have also yielded coins which seem to
fit into this same category. Lacking further confirmation, the reader may
make his own interpretation.

From America B.C. by Barry Fell (Ref. 65).

In the central and eastern United States there was continued Hopewell
expansion with a distinctive ritual and artistic tradition, probably indicating
a loosely knit group of societies with common religious and artistic
conventions. The Gulf states, too, were heavily inhabited probably as far
back as this era. In southern Colorado the Anasazi people entered into what
we have already labeled the Basket-maker period. Excavations at Durango
show both cave and open village sites, with evidence of maize growing as
well as hunting activities. Baskets were made of plant fibers loosely plaited,
coiled or stitched and decorated in red and black. (Ref. 215, 45, 210)

The Mogollon Culture in southern New Mexico and eastern Arizona
apparently developed from the Cochise Culture and was manifested by a
sedentary life style utilizing a plain pottery and existing on maize along
with the fruits of some gathering and hunting. The name "Mogollon" is one
lately applied[footnote], and first given to a range of mountains running
almost east-west across central Arizona and New Mexico, marking the
southern edge of the northern high plateau country. South of this Mogollon
ridge the terrain drops several thousand feet into the southern basin with
meager rainfall and hot desert valleys with desert grasses, mesquite and
cactus. In the middle of that basin there are north-south running mountain
ranges going from New Mexico well down into Old Mexico. About 100
B.C. the Mogollon Indians have been identified as inhabiting this region.
They continued to live in that large area for 1,500 years, constantly
improving their crops and tools.

The name was taken from an 18th century Spanish official.

At about the same time another group of Indians, who may have been still
another branch of the ancient Cochise, settled in the hot arid valleys of the
lower Gila and Salt rivers. They have become known as the
Hohokam|[footnote], surviving through their descendants, the Pima and the
Papago. The Hohokam lived in Arizona for 1,200 years, building at
Snaketown more than 5,000 houses at a rate of 400 a year. (Ref. 45, 210)
In the modern Pima language this means "those that have gone before".

MEXICO, CENTRAL AMERICA AND THE CARIBBEAN

The Olmec civilization seems to have faded out at this time and no clear cut
explanation has ever been given. But in the Valley of Mexico the brilliant
city-state of Teotihuacan began to blossom. Originally a settlement of
moderate size surrounded by a number of similar settlements this was soon
a full fledged city and not just a ceremonial center like many of those of the
Olmecs. There were large scale irrigation works, cultivated tomatoes and
peanuts as well as maize and other grains and the domesticated turkey.
There is evidence of a far flung trade with other areas of Central America
and perhaps the North American settlements. Farther south in Guatemala
the Mayan people continued to expand, beginning what has been called the
Classical Age and the peoples of Costa Rica and Panama lived about as
described in previous chapters. (Ref. 215, 64)

Recent excavations at the ancient town of Cerros in modern Belize indicate
that about 50 B.C. the Maya inhabitants undertook a massive urban
renewal. This involved the construction of a massive urban complex with
large open plazas, great pyramids and 103 public buildings and dwellings
arranged in a careful plan with the entire center surrounded by a canal 1,200
meters in length. Apparently all this was undertaken because of the
excellent trading position of Cerros on a Yucatan bay at the mouth of the
New River. The largest pyramid had some 30,000 cubic meters of rubble
fill, twice the size of a famous North Acropolis at Tikal and represents a
considerable engineering feat. (Ref. 164)

SOUTH AMERICA

Multiple cultures continued in the area of Greater Peru. On the northern
coast there continued to be the Vicus Society. Their pottery, featuring
resistive (i.e. negative) painting, resembled the Gallinazo. In the middle
south coast the polychrome pottery and embroidery fabrics of the Nazca
developed about this time but actual dating is difficult because of the
extensive looting of ancient dwelling sites that has taken place in the past.
The Tiahuanaco Society continued to thrive in the high Andes in the Lake
Titacaco district. Contact between these highlanders and the Nazca and
Huari peoples of the lower lands undoubtedly occurred with exchange of
pottery dyes and other materials. The two areas are only 120 difficult miles
apart. (Ref. 45, 62)

Forward to America: 0 to A.D. 100
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CONMDUBRWN FE

America: 0 to 100 A.D.

AMERICA

Back to America: 100 B.C to 0

NORTH AMERICA

THE FAR NORTH AND CANADA

In the very far north the Dorset Arctic tradition continued to thrive. (See
particularly the 6th and Ist centuries, B.C.). Some further remarks about the
Indians on the western coast and islands of Canada seem in order. Their
houses were large and rectangular with walls and roofs made of hand split
boards. The roofs were gabled and there were no windows. The short front
walls had small doors, usually highly decorated, sometimes with carvings,
sometimes with paint. There were plaited amts on the dirt floors and no
furniture. Houses could be as long as 70 feet. Social classes included a
ruling aristocracy, commoners and slaves. Being basically a sea people they
built sea-going canoes, some 170 feet long, 61/2 feet wide and 41/2 feet
deep, which could accommodate 100 people. They navigated the open seas
easily and as we shall note in a later chapter, some of their voyages
undoubtedly went to the Hawaiian Islands were the people became
Polynesians. The currents and winds alone sometimes carry large logs from
northern Vancouver Island directly to Hawaii. The canoes were made of
one-half of a large tree trunk and carried only a mat which could be used as
a poor sail. For sea voyages two canoes could be tied together and a
platform put over both. One man steered with a paddle in the stern and
kneeling pairs of men paddled strongly. Three types of fish-hooks were
used, none of which have ever been seen in Indonesia or Southeast Asia.
These northwest Indians did not have pottery.

THE UNITED STATES

This was the beginning of the maximum expansion of the Hopewell Culture
with secondary areas of influence in the so-called Marksville group near the
Missisippi delta and the Santa Rosa groups at the base of the Florida
peninsula. Their rather elaborate decorations (usually for the dead) included
copper from Lake Superior, mica from the Appalachians, obsidian from the
Rocky Mountains, alligator teeth and conch shells from Florida and the
Gulf and stone from Minnesota and Wisconsin. At the risk of over-
emphasizing the rather bizarre hypotheses of Barry Fell, we shall mention
that he writes that the builders of the Hopewell mounds were mainly
Libyans, assisted by Negroid Nubian crew members who left sculptures of
heads and African animals along the Mississippi River system in Ohio,
Iowa, Oklahoma and Arkansas. He even suggest that Jewish refugees from
the first Romano-Jewish war ended up in Kentucky and Tennessee.
[footnote]

Such concepts are really not new. Early American colonists, particularly
one James Adair, persistently held that one of the lost tribes of Israel had
come to America and mixed with the southern Indians. Others thought that
the Welsh Prince Madoc or even Phoenicians had early come to America.
(Ref. 267)

In his most recent book Fell (Ref. 66) gives a translation from Plutarch
which allegedly tells of how Greek North Africans (Late Carthaginians)
sailed westward from Britain passing three island groups equidistant from
one another (Orkneys, Shetlands and Faeros?), and then to Ogygia
(Iceland?) five sailing days away and then on to the northern coast of a
continent, Epeiros, that rims the ocean. South Greenland would fit the
alleged distance and direction. Then, says Plutarch,[footnote] if one sails
south along the coast one will pass a frozen sea and come to a land where
the Greeks settled and married with the native barbarians. (The Davis Strait
between Labrador and Greenland becomes an impassable mass of floating
ice during the summer season.) As for the place where the Greeks married,
Plutarch says it was in the same latitude as the Caspian Sea, thus Nova
Scotia and New England. It is in connection with this that Fell quotes Dr.
Silas Rand[footnote] who spent a lifetime in the last century among the
Micmac and who wrote a Dictionary of the Micmac Language, as
indicating a prevalence of Greek roots in their language. An illustrative list
of over 50 such Greek roots are given by Fell along with the Micmac

equivalents, implying a derivation from the Greek spoken in North Africa
in Ptolemaic times, words that were a part of the everyday language of
Libya and Egypt. This concept has been reported false by the Smithsonian
institute.

The exact sources of the Plutarch material are not given by Fell. He says
simply that Plutarch, writing in the 2nd century, allegedly got his material
from old records in Carthage.

Similarly, we have no source reference concerning Dr. Rand.

Sometime during the Woodland Period maize had made its way from South
America and/or Mexico to the southern United States and had spread from
there even into New England and the Mid-Atlantic states. Varieties of lint
corm or popcorn appeared in the South. (Ref. 267).

In southern New Mexico and Chihuahua, Mexico the Mogollon people
continued to live in their semi-subterranean pit-houses and appeared to have
self governing villages under the leadership of civil and religious elders
democratically selected. An important feature was a large ceremonial house
known as the great kiva, three or four times the size of the usual dwellings.
In southern Arizona and the neighboring Mexican state of Sonora the
Hohokam people began extensive irrigation systems with dams on rivers
and some canals 30 feet wide and 25 miles long. This society developed for
over 1,000 years, but the exact date of its origin has long been debated,
estimates varying from 300 B.C. to A.D. 500. (Please see the 5th century
C.E.). At any rate, they made exquisite jewelry and pottery pyramids and
used astronomy. This is another American culture which Barry Fell (Ref.
66) believes to be of Libyan origin carrying the tradition and navigational
and astronomical knowledge of the Old World and which had arrived via
Pacific travelers as manifested by the original maps made by the famous
Maui. (See The Pacific: 300 to 201 B.C.). The frontispiece on Fell’s latest
book (Ref. 66) is a map supposedly drawn by Maui showing North America
and the eastern Pacific, using the primary meridian as a line through
Alexandria, Egypt (as used by Eratosthenes) with an international date line
at 180 degrees, passing about 10 degrees east of Hawaii. It shows Hudson
Bay and the isthmus of Panama and survives on rock drawings in Nevada.
Fell says that additions to the original Libyan lettering have been made later
in Kufic Arabic, showing that the map was still in use, probably for

educational purposes as late as A.D. 750. It is his contention that
petroglyphs and writings from Nevada and California, carefully recorded
and filed at the University of California and other places, could not be
previously interpreted because the nature of the writing (Arabic) was not
recognized. The difficulty in all this is that current authorities including
southwest museum directors and southwest anthropology professors in
recent publications make no mention of these concepts whatsoever. (Ref.
66, 210, 269).

MEXICO, CENTRAL AMERICA AND THE CARIBBEAN

People in the far north of Mexico participated in the Southwest American
societies are related in the paragraphs immediately above. Much farther
south there was rapid growth in the Teotihuacan area and continued
evidence of human sacrifice, common to all MesoAmerican societies.
Skeletons wrapped in nets, ritually burned children’s remains and buried
heads all testify to this. (Ref. 273).

The Mayan civilization continued in Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador.
The Mayas counted in 20s and had a much more manipulative
representation than the clumsy Roman numerals of the same time. The
Maya zero, represented by a shell-shaped sign___, was a concept which
did not reach Europe from India for almost another 1,000 years. The
numbers 1,2,3 and 4 were represented simply by the corresponding number
of dots, while 5 was a single bar. Thus 5 was ,7was___-, etc.,
while 10 was two bars. Eighteen in this system was and 20, of
course, was four bars, one under the other. For numbers higher than 20 a
new row was Started above the first, to mark the number of 20s in total.
Thus the number 234 would be expressed by only two Mayan symbols 0 on
top sign for 11 (meaning 11 sets of 20 or 220) and underneath the sign for
14, thus:

In the last chapter we noted the May trading center of Cerros near the base
of Yucatan. In this first century of the Christian era this city went into a
steep decline. It is probable that with increasingly strong and well-managed

overland trading routes the riversea networks decreased in importance.
(Ref. 264). Additional Notes

Pre-civilization societies continued to build up in Costa Rica and Panama.
Dozens of settlements each almost half a kilometer in length in Cerro Punta.
Panama, suggest considerable population build-up in the valleys south of
the Continental Divide in this era. The ceramics of this stage are similar in
both Panama and Costa Rica. (Ref. 266, 265)

SOUTH AMERICA

The early Intermediat Period of Peruvian history continued with a
developed Vicus Culture dominating the north. There is some evidence that
the trephining of skulls, using knives of hard obsidian, was a common
practice in Peru at this time, for whatever reason. On the aird plain between
southern Peru and the Andean foothills the Nazca Indians lived, making
featherd turbans and fine cotton cloaks embroidered in multi-colored wools.
Many of these have been recovered in Nazca cemeteries. Engel (Ref. 62)
says that at this period there was no evidence of maritime activity among
these people and fishermen were still depicted on ceramics swimming in the
water catching fish in nets. Recent examination of skeletons of this era
show a number of ear-canal osteomas, probably secondary to this work in
the water. Gradually there was a rejuvenation of the so-called classical
Nazca art, after an initial period of decline. The Tiahuanaco society
continued in the high Andes. (Ref. 176, 62, 3)

Note:In the Middle America late Preclassic period (300 B.C. to A.D. 250),
the city of Colha, Belize, was a center for craft specialists who mass
produced such stone tools as adzes, axes, daggers and hoes, as well as
special ceremonial items. These were apparently exported all over the
Maya region. To date some 32 work-shops have been excavated. (Ref.
304).

Forward to America: A.D. 101 to 200
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ONDUAWNE

America: A.D. 101 to 200

AMERICA

Back to America: 0 to A.D. 100

NORTH AMERICA

In the far north there was very little change from the previous centuries.
(See particularly 6th and Ist centuries B.C.). About the central and eastern
United States there is some disagreement. Brian Fagan, the Distinguished
Professor of Anthropology at the University of California at Santa Barbara,
writes that there was continued Hopewell expansion with increased cultural
development even up until the 5th century C.E. (Ref. 215), but the
Encyclopedia of Archeology (Ref. 45) states that there was a rapid decline
of the Hopewell at about A.D. 200. We know that the southeastern United
States was inhabited but we have available only very limited information at
this early period. Fell (Ref. 66) describes finding of what he believes to be
Hebrew shekels dating from the Second Revolt of A.D. 132 in various parts
of Kentucky and a nearby district of Arkansas.

The Mogollon, Hohokam and Anasazi cultures continued to develop in the
southwestern United States. (Please see adjacent modules). The Mogollon
people learned to grind and polish small stone slabs to make useful articles
such as paint palettes, dishes and stone smoking pipes for tobacco. Their
Spear points were used with a rude throwing stick called the atlatl, an
ancient weapon of the Americas. (Ref. 210)

MEXICO, CENTRAL AMERICA, AND THE CARIBBEAN

The Teotihuacan people of Mexico increased their city size to an eight
square mile area, in the center of which rose the truncated pyramid of the
sun - 210 feet high and 750 feet square. It was as large at the base as the
great pyramid of Cheops in Egypt. At the height of its prosperity, which

was sometime in these early Christian centuries, Teotihuacan had a
population of 120,000 with an added network of villages surrounding the
main city. Over 5,000 buildings have been examined in this area, including
400 work- shops for making obsidian tools and weapons and some 300
potteries. Irrigation channels were dug for both city and farm water. This
center was 30 miles northeast of present day Mexico City.

At Izapa on the Mexico-Guatemala border, there was a distinctive art style
resembling the earlier Olmec Culture and it may represent a connecting link
between that and the later classic Maya Culture which developed to the

east. In approximately this same timeframe, El Tajin, located in the
Veracruz area a few miles inland from Santa Louisa, emerged as a major
Huastec administrative and religious center. The Huastecs were "cousins" of
the Maya and El Tajin, as their major city, soon counted a population in the
thousands, with hundreds of buildings, temples, palaces, ball-courts and
countless individual dwellings.

On the classical dating scale the Mayan civilization was nearing its peak
with many great scale cities in the forests, particularly in Peten and the
region of the ceremonial center of Tikal. For the most part they were a
peace-loving people who farmed, wove cotton and made paper from the
fibers of the fig-tree[ footnote]. They developed a system of writing which
was partly phonetic and believed now to have been inherited in great part
from the Olmecs. On the new dating systems this peak period of the Mayas
may have been about 250 years later. (Please see America: 300 to 201 B.C.)

In contrast there was no paper in Europe at this time. China invented a
paper but kept it secret for centuries. See The Far East: A.D. 101 to 200.

It is interesting that the prominent British historian, Hugh Thomas (Ref.
213), denies that the Maya had significant writing, apparently basing his
comments on a single given reference in a 1978 Scientific American article.
But his reference, in the "Science and the Citizen" department of the May,
1978 Scientific American (Ref. 193) gives me an entirely different concept.
Although admitting that much Maya writing had been destroyed by the
invading Spanish conquistadors in the mid-16th century, the article lists
several sources of remaining Mayan hieroglyphics. There are manuscripts

painted on deerskin which are apparently in museums scattered across the
world, as they are known as the Dresden, Madrid and Paris codexes; then
there are 64 hieroglyphs that were written down in 1566 for the Bishop of
Merida by a surviving Maya scribe; and finally there is a long inscription
found inside three structures at Palenque (dated 7th to 9th centuries C.E.),
consisting of some 600 glyphs, the translation of which is still proceeding
under anthropologists and epigraphers from Yale University. The part that
has been translated describes twelve successive rulers of the past and details
of a current 13th ruler with birth, pedigree, accession, military
achievements, ritual acts, etc. of all. More inscriptions turn up every year,
on pottery, monument stones, buildings, etc. The written language involved
at least 600 individual glyphs which could stand alone or be used in
combinations of two or more.

This was a major developmental period in Costa Rican history with a
dramatic increase in sites and population along with a trend toward social
stratification. Many new artifacts appeared including elaborately sculpted
metates of volcanic stone, ceremonial stone mace-heads, carved jade,
figurines, ocarinas, whistles, stamps and rattles. Panama developed
similarly and there were undoubtedly long distance Mesoamerican trade
networks. (Ref. 265)

SOUTH AMERICA

Sometime in this or the next century Paracas in the middle of south Peru
was abandoned, perhaps because of a severe tidal wave or other natural
disaster. Some Nazca villages, however, survived for several additional
centuries and the Tiahuanaco Culture of the high Andes remained
untouched. The potato was used as decoration on Peruvian pottery as early
as the end of this century. (Ref. 213)

Forward to America: A.D. 201 to 300
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cos) dy Ol BG

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Europe
The Far East

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America: A.D. 201 to 300

AMERICA

Back to America: A.D. 101 to 200

NORTH AMERICA

THE FAR NORTH AND CANADA

For information concerning the Dorset Inuits of the far north, please see the
6th and 1st centuries B.C. and the 9th century C.E. For the northwest
coastal Indians see the previous two or three centuries under this same
category. Barry Fell (Ref. 66) insists that throughout the last pre-Christian
and these early Christian centuries the New England Celts, which he has
described, gradually migrated with their Indian wives and children across
Canada westward eventually reaching British Columbia. He reports that
much of the vocabulary and grammar of the Takhelne language of the
Fraser Lakes area spoken yet today, is a Creole Celtic tongue related to
Gaelic and derived from Godelic. In America (Ref. 66) he lists 54 words
still used today by the Takhelne people along with the Godelic and Gaelic
words and their much different English equivalents[footnote]. The table is
quite convincing, but why is this not even commented on elsewhere in the
literature?

Ref. 66, page 198.

THE UNITED STATES

Sometime in these early Christian centuries the "Effigy Mound" Culture
developed in the upper Mississippi Valley as a regional variation of the
Hopewell Culture. There the Indians built gigantic mounds in the form of
animals - panthers, lizards, deer, bears and birds. Most of the mounds had
burials, often at critical parts of the figure such as at the heart, hip or knee.

Although probably of religious significance, no one really knows what
these Minnesota and Wisconsin mounds actually mean. (Ref. 215) The
southeast Indians will be discussed at much length in later chapters.

In the southwest the Mogollon, Hohokam and Anasazi peoples continued
their development. A more detailed look at their cultures will be given in
later centuries, corresponding to the time of the heights of their
development.

MEXICO, CENTRAL AMERICA, AND THE CARIBBEAN

We have mentioned previously (3rd century B.C.) that recent excavations
near Coba on the Yucatan peninsula have revealed much of the Late Pre-
Classic Maya period. The peak of this civilization appears to have been
reached in this 3rd century C.E. and the finding have included the
Nohosmul pyramid, rising 157 feet out of the jungle, 5.4 square miles of
temple buildings, streets and plazas, 187 miles of roads and streets, some 80
feet wide with traffic circles and underpasses[footnote]. This development
apparently followed the Guatemala Maya Society, although it is known that
by A.D. 250 there was a true urban Mayan zone persisting at Kaminaljuyu
at the site of present day Guatemala City. This was the beginning of the
greatest era of Maya civilization, with one of the earliest large, ceremonial
centers at Tikal, dating to A.D. 292, in what is called the early Classic
period. There was a strong central Mexican (Teotihuacan) presence, as that
city was continuing development with obsidian mining as a major
enterprise. (Ref. 215, 45)

One of the strange features of all early Central American societies is the
fact that none of them used the wheel. Children's toy carts with wheels have
been found, but no wheels were used otherwise. One explanation has been
that the jungles and mountains made wheels useless, and yet why were they
not used in cities with miles and miles of roads as just described?

The Mayas, even for generations after their peak, spoke of two distinct
culture heroes, Itzamna and Kukulcan, both bearded, although arriving at
different times and from opposite directions, leading the Mayas to Yucatan.
Their legends said that the largest and most ancient immigration was from

the east through the ocean and led by Itzamna, guide, instructor and
civilizer. Kukulcan, a later arrival, was different - arriving with 20 men
wearing flowing robes and sandals, with long beards and bare heads,
ordering the people to confess and fast[footnote]. He allegedly founded
Mayapan and caused much building at Chichen Itza, and taught "peace".
His humanitarian teachings coincide completely with those of Quetzalcoatl,
of the later Aztecs. " Kukul" is the Maya word for quetzal bird and "can" is
a serpent .

This legend from Las Casas' Historia de las Indias of 1559, as related by
Heyerdahl (Ref. 95), pages 113 and 114.

A colored painting from an interior chamber of a pyramid at Chichen Itza,
copied by Morris, Charlot and Morris in 1931 (and now destroyed by
humidity and tourists) showed a seashore battle involving two racial types,
one with white skin and long, flowing yellow hair arriving in boats, and the
other type dark-skinned and wearing feathered headdresses and loin cloths.
A reed vessel on the pyramid painting recalls the reed boats used at Luxus
in Morocco and the old Egyptian paintings of reed boats of the Nile. Where
did these blond men come from? We do know from written accounts of the
discovery of the Canary Islands by Europeans a few generations before
Columbus, that those islands were inhabited by a mixed population called
"suanches" - some small, swarthy and negroid, others tall, white-skinned,
blond and bearded, all just like the Maya pyramid at Yucatan. The Berbers
of North Africa were similarly mixed and remain so today. Blond and red-
haired people are known to have been in the Caucasian plains east of Asia
Minor and nowhere on the continent is red hair more common than in
Lebanon. (Ref. 95) So, do we take our pick? As further confirmation of the
presence of bearded men in this Central American area, we have Stephens
(Ref. 203) account of his exploration of Copan, Honduras, in the 1830s. He
describes finding multiple idols with the males all identified by beards and
some with mustaches. The beards were like those on Egyptian statues but
the latter did not have mustaches. One of the flat-topped altars described
had ornaments suggesting the trunks of elephants! All of the monuments at
Copan had sculptures and hieroglyphics.

SOUTH AMERICA

In southern Peru the remaining Nazca Indians made fanciful birds and
animals of gold metal sheets and decorated their pottery with animals,
demons and geometric forms in multiple colors. Their textile work was also
intricate and colorful . We assume that the Tiahuanaco people continued to
live in the high country although no particular datings from this century
have been recorded. A crock of coins of all the Roman emperors of the first
three centuries after Christ have been found buried on the coast of
Venezuela. No one knows the source of these coins. (Ref. 176,66) As this is
being written a newspaper item reports the finding of hundreds of pieces of
Roman amphorae at the bottom of a Brazilian bay. The underwater
archeologist responsible anticipates finding a sunken Roman ship, soon, and
the amphorae will be dated with some accuracy by the pottery luminescence
method in the near future, but he is confident that the date will be the 2nd or
3rd century C.E.

Forward to America: A.D. 301 to 400
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CONMDUBRWN FE

America: A.D. 301 to 400

AMERICA

Back to America: A.D. 201 to 300

NORTH AMERICA

THE FAR NORTH AND CANADA

Please see previous chapters, particularly the 6th, 4th and 1st centuries B.C.
and the 3rd century C.E., as well as The Pacific: A.D. 301 to 400.

THE UNITED STATES

It is apparent that Indian people inhabited most of the American continent
throughout all these early Christian centuries. Most American chiefdoms
were agricultural (Hopewell, Mogollon, Hohokam and Anasazi) but along
the northwest coast there were unusually rich fishing grounds with whales
and seals which supported large villages and a complex ceremonial life. In
the southwest it was near the end of the Early Basket Maker period of the
Anasazi. In their excavated graves, along with the baskets have been found
skeletal remains of these ancient people, buried dressed in string aprons and
loin cloths made of hair, furs and feathers. No clay vessels or fired pottery
have been found. (Ref. 8, 210)

MEXICO, CENTRAL AMERICA, AND THE CARIBBEAN

At this time, the beginning of the Classic Period in Middle America,
Teotihuacan had become the largest of the ancient Mexican empires,
extending from the Valley of Mexico to Guatemala. In addition a new

empire of the Mayas appeared in Yucatan, with paved roads extending
throughout the realm. Although the city was ancient, there were now
probably 1,000 people living around Cuella, in northern Belize. A twelve
foot high platform, spread over more than an acre, has been dated to this 4th
century in that place. Increasingly taller pyramids elevated temples as high
as 30 feet above the ground. Norman Hammond (Ref. 263) who has
recently excavated many archaeological layers at Cuello, says that he has
demonstrated an independent Maya cultural tradition there at least 4,000
years old, and he believes that this area was the mainspring of Maya
civilization - not highland Mexico or highland Central America, as some
have claimed. The entire Mayan Culture was marked by a distinctive art
style, the use of the corbelled vault and advanced mathematical concepts,
including the use of zero, a complex calendar and the New World's most
advanced writing system. (See also America: 300 to 201 B.C., America: 0
to A.D. 100 and America: A.D. 101 to 200). Mayan astronomers calculated
the exact length of the solar year, the lunar month, the revolution of planet
Venus and were able to predict eclipses. For the latter they used monuments
similar in function to Stonehenge in England. Their sister civilization in
Peten also continued on a high level and the skilled Huastec builders of El
Tajun at Veracruz diverted fresh-water canals to fertile terraces between
tidal rivers and brackish estuaries. This civilization flourished for 800 to
900 years. (Ref. 8, 39, 236)

SOUTH AMERICA

More information about the interesting Moche Culture of Peru is warranted
at this time, even though they may have lived at a much earlier period, and
the accomplishments we shall mention now may be confused with the later
Chan Chan Society. A history of their race and customs seems to have been
left in their ceramic art. Portrait ceramics show the round face, high
cheekbones and hooked nose, with flaring nostrils. The figures frequently
depict vivid movement. Their landscapes had unusual detail and their
goldwork emphasized mosaics of turquoise encrusted on gold. Using silver
and copper in smelting techniques, they had the "lost-wax" method of
casting and their own forms of welding, soldering, hammering, gilding and

repousse. Although their origin and date of appearance is highly debated,
the society apparently existed for about 1,000 years.

In the high country of the Peruvian-Bolivian border, the Tiahuanaco
civilization persisted. In the south the Nazcas may have had a close
relationship with the Paracas, and a place known as Necropolis may have
been used as a cemetery for chiefs and priests of both tribes. More than four
hundred mummies, all wrapped in shrouds and elaborate cloaks have been
found there in a building under the sands. Some of the embroidery designs
show strange, masked people who appear to be descending from above with
the help of many ribbons, the significance of which remains unknown. (Ref.
10, 176)

Foward to America: A.D. 401 to 500
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ONMAURWNPE

America: A.D. 401 to 500

AMERICA

Back to America: A.D. 301 to 400

NORTH AMERICA

THE FAR NORTH AND CANADA

Please see 6th and 1st centuries B.C. and Ist, 3rd and 9th centuries C.F.
regarding Arctic Cultures. At Ungava Bay, 750 miles north of Quebec City,
there are rock walls dating to A.D. 500. Eskimo legend says they were built
by a race of giants with a strange language - Vikings? (Ref. 176) Professor
Fell (Ref. 66) and Libyan colleagues have found a 5th century inscription at
Figiug Oasis, east Morocco, recording a flight of Christian monks to North
America to escape the Vandals. The script was Libyan, the language Libyan
Arabic. An early Christian inscription in Libyan Arabic dialect has
allegedly also been found by Fell's associates at Oak Island, Nova Scotia.

THE UNITED STATES

In this century the Hopewell trading networks broke down for some
unknown reason and the Hopewell influence declined sharply. It is possible
that a population explosion strained the limits of the economic system and
the breakdown resulted. But along the Mississippi the Mound Builders
appeared, and these were the antecedents of the Choctaws Chickasaw,
Natches and others. Perhaps the greatest Indian monument of all time was
constructed near Chillicothe, Ohio. This Great Serpent Mound, representing
a serpent with open jaws clasping an egg, is 1,254 feet long, winding along
hilltops with a coiled tail. It does not appear to have any connection with
the effigy mounds farther north. See also America in the 3rd century C.E.
(Ref. 215)

In the southwest this was the Basket Maker III or Late Basketmaker period
of the Anasazi Indians who were using fired earthenware pottery, the
technique probably learned from the Mogollons to the south. The water
supply for their crops had become inconsistent drought alternating with
floods, but the Anasazi solved this problem by special terracing and the
building of small dams with irrigation channels. One water-way in
southwestern Colorado, however, was four miles long. These people had
become skillful builders, using stone and beginning to construct complex
homes which we now call pueblos. (Ref. 45, 210)

Once again we must report some almost unbelievable, unconfirmed
statements of Barry Fell. In his latest book (Ref. 66) he writes that
mathematical notation was revolutionized in this century when Nevada
voyagers brought back the decimal system from India. Since European
decimal ciphers were not used until the 11th century, this, if true, would
place American mathematicians far ahead of their Mediterranean
contemporaries. The decimal system required a new type of abacus, to the
base ten, and such has allegedly been found in Indiana and is now in the
Epigraphic Museum. Abaci from Nevada have previously been mistaken
for gaming boards, according to this same author. It is very difficult to
accept all these concepts at face value at this time without more
corroboration, but Fell does present his evidence in a convincing manner
and who knows but what time may yet prove him right?

The pioneering phase of the Hohokam ended about A.D. 500. Interchange
with Mexico had continued through the centuries and now the bloody,
Mexican ball game associated with religious ritual was introduced. Platform
mounds similar to those in Mexico were also erected for use of dancers and
musicians. A favorite design on Hohokam pottery was the snake, often
shown being attacked by a bird (feathered serpent motive). After the end of
this century the Hohokam began to spread out from the desert valleys,
moving up the rivers north and northeast. (Ref. 210)

The Mogollon Culture farther to the east continued as previously and it is
apparent in the literature that not all writers separate this from the Hohokam
and/or Anasazi cultures, but in some respects it is definitely unique. (Ref.
210)

MEXICO, CENTRAL AMERICA, AND THE CARIBBEAN

This may have been the zenith of the Teotihuacan civilization which was
the spiritual metropolis of Mexico. Despite a century of modern research no
one still is able to say for certain who built this great city, what language
they spoke or why they suddenly seemed to vanish. It overlooked a fertile
valley with plenty of water and great supplies of obsidian, the raw material
for utensils and weapons of great sharpness. Nine-tenths of the city is still
buried today. (Ref. 176)

There was also continued growth of the Maya centers of Yucatan with
extensive trading including the importation of salt, obsidian and other
minerals such as hematite, pyrite and jade. Craftsmen, accountants,
commercial diplomats and other experts were needed to run this network.
(Ref. 215) According to Principal Epochs of the Ancient History of
Yucatan, written in the Maya language from memory by an elderly Indian
and translated by the 19th century Don Pio Perez[footnote] the Mayas
thought that they were descendants of the Toltecs of Mexico who had
arrived in Yucatan between 144 and 217 of our era, but Bacalar and
Chichen Itze were apparently not established until between 360 and 432. A
few people continued to live in dispersed settlements around the old center
of Cerros until about 450, but this would never again recover its place in the
great trade network.

As quoted in the Appendix of Stephens book (Ref. 205).

This century marked the end of the Period IV in Costa Rican history and
was marked by the prolific jade carvings. The best quality jadeite may have
been brought to Costa Rica from the north, indicating more and more
contact with other Mesoamerican cultures.

Perhaps ceremonial metates, maceheads and jades were used there by an
elite group who held these items as badges of office. Most of the jades take
the form of the axe-god in which a forest clearing tool makes up the lower
half of a pendant. (Ref. 265)

SOUTH AMERICA

In the heart of the central coast of Peru there is a long archeological gap
from the time of the Chavin Society to about A.D. 450 when the Early Lima
or the Maranga Society appeared with the building of a number of ziggurats
on a large hacienda. Maranga territory, as revealed by pottery remains,
stretched from the Chillon to the Lurin valleys. The people probably used
lateral canals for irrigation. By the beginning of the 20th century there were
still about 75 of their great pyramidal mound dwellings in and around Lima
but they are gone now. In the lower Chillon Valley there are the ruins of a
vast rectangular enclosure 700 feet long, made of trapezoidal clay blocks,
each weighing several hundred pounds. They also made long, high, straight
walls, miles long, running obliquely to the river bank. These people
apparently came from "nowhere" and disappeared again after a few
centuries.

During this same period the Tiahuanaco Society flourished in the high
Andes. (See multiple previous centuries). In the south the Nazcas may have
reached their apex with the construction of the puzzling giant geometric
shapes and outlines of animals and plants, made by arranging stones in lines
covering some 200 square miles and actually identifiable only from the air.
Tons of small stones were so used and strings were stretched from posts to
keep the lines straight. Carbon dating of some of the post remains indicates
A.D. 500. Maria Reiche, who has spent her adult life in these desert
drawings, believes that they are forms of a giant calendar. Another
possibility is that they were part of a fertility cult.

In Columbia, 250 miles south-west of Bogata, in a dense forest there are
more than 300 large stone statues, some 14 to 21 feet tall, some with teeth
like cats and some which seem to be feeding on the children they are
holding. Carbon - 14 dating indicates that these were made between this 5th
and the 12th centuries. A certain affinity of these statues to those of Easter
Island gives some further credence to Thor Heyerdahl's theories of South
American migrations into the Pacific. (Ref. 62, 176)

Forward to America: A.D. 501 to 600
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ONAUARW

. Central and Northern Asia

Europe
The Far East

. The Indian Subcontinent
. [The Near East
. Pacific

America: A.D. 501 to 600
AMERICA

NORTH AMERICA

Back to America: A.D. 401 to 500

CANADA AND THE FAR NORTH

See previous chapters and 9th century C.E., as well as Europe: A.D. 501 to
600.

THE UNITED STATES

The Mississippian Culture of Mound Builders, which now replaced the
decaying Hopewell Culture, flowered along the Mississippi River and other
river systems of the south.

Archaeologists do not agree about its origin. Some attribute it to the
migration of ideas from Mexico or Central America and it is true that some
of the sophisticated art does resemble Middle American. But even more of
the art seems to have had roots in Adena or Hopewell and current thinking
treats the Mississippian as an indigenous culture, an outgrowth of the
Hopewell blended with late arriving Mexican elements. The characteristic
feature of the culture is the pyramidal mound serving as a foundation for a
temple or a chief's house. Some centers were very small but others were
gigantic, as Cahokia at East St. Louis, Illinois, where there were more than
85 mounds and a village area that extended for six miles along the Ohio
River. One of the largest of the mounds was about 100 feet high and its base
covered 16 acres. The immensity of the labor involved, without the use of
wheels or beasts of burden, is almost unbelievable. The entire enterprise
may have taken several hundreds of years. The Mississippian population
was dense in that at least 383 villages bordered the Mississippi River in the

short distance of about 700 miles between points of entrance of the Ohio
and Red rivers respectively and there were thousands of other villages up
and down the other parts of the river system. (Ref. 64)

If we are to believe Professor Fell (Ref. 66) Libyan science and
mathematics continued to flourish in the southwest. The Hohokam
continued their colonizing migrations, beginning their colonial period
sometime after 550, spreading artifacts over most of Arizona and taking
with them their customs, including the sacred ball-game. Farther northeast
the Anasazi or Pueblo Builders, continued advancement with better pottery
designs and increased trade, importing abalone shells and turquoise. (Ref.
269) From a source still unknown they obtained the bow and arrow and
they developed the hafted ax. Agriculture increased with the cultivation of
better corn, squash and beans, which added protein to their diet. Their
population then soared and their settlements spread so that they even had pit
houses in the cliffs of the Grand Canyon. (Ref. 277)

MEXICO, CENTRAL AMERICA, AND THE CARIBBEAN

Teotihuacan in the Valley of Mexico was at the height of its power and was
larger than imperial Rome, some estimating the population at 125,000 with
an area of 20 square kilometers. (Ref. 8) It was a religious and cultural
capital and a major economic and political center for Middle America. Its
power extended widely with intermingling of tribes and cultures, so that
there was a strong Mexican presence even at Kaminaljuyu (now Guatemala
City). Even the lowland Maya region, as at Tikal, had Teotihuacan artistic
traditions, although Tikal was only one-fifth as large as the Mexican city.

The Maya had a number of languages, all closely related but not mutually
intelligible. There were two principal divisions - the lowlands groups,
including Yucatec, Chol and Chorti - and the highlands (Guatemalan) which
included Mam and Quiche. The educated Maya were profoundly
intellectual and we have noted their mathematics (0 to 100 A.D.) and
astronomy (A.D. 301 to 400) previously. A great renaissance of Mayan
Culture now took place in the cities of Yucatan, gradually supplanting the
importance of Peten, in the south. (Ref. 177, 146, 215, 163) According to

traditions, picture writings and Mexican manuscripts written after the
conquest, the Toltecs[ footnote] were banished from their native country
northwest of Mexico in 596 and proceeded southward. (Ref. 205)

This suggests the probability of more continuity and interrelationships
among the original Mexican populations than often stated. Modern histories
do not mention the Toltecs as a separate people until about the 9th century.

This century marks the beginning of Period V of Costa Rican prehistory,
with each of three archaeological zones developing independently. In
Guanacaste-Nicoya there was the beginning of the famous Nicoya
polychrome pottery tradition which resembled Maya ceramics of the Late
Classic period of Honduras and El Salvador. The progress in Panama
seemed to come more or less to a halt and this country never developed any
truly state-centered societies as seen farther north in Central America. (Ref.
266)

SOUTH AMERICA

NORTHERN AND WESTERN SOUTH AMERICA

Along various parts of the Magdalena River Valley in Colombia and
particularly near San Agustin are enormous piles of debris, some of which
have been excavated revealing sculptured monoliths and the whole
indicating a great ceremonial center something like a Maya complex.
Radio-carbon datings indicate activity in this 6th century with continuation
for another 1,000 years. Since it has some similarities to both the Olmecs
and to Easter Island the question arises as to whether this astonishing
statuary was local in origin or from migrating people from Central America
or even from Polynesia. Just east of Popayan on the eastern hot-land part of
Andean Columbia is an interior, isolated valley called "Tierradentro" where
there are interesting monuments perhaps dating to this same era, although it
may be a secondary society having existed a thousand years later. Accurate
dating has not been accomplished. Tombs there have long ago been looted,
probably of gold and jewels, but three dimensional statues reminiscent of

Easter Island and representing anthropomorphic gods are comparable to
those of San Agustin. (Ref. 62)

Peru consisted of about nine separate regions, each with its own local art
style in this century. The Moche, or their descendants, and the Nasca were
supreme but other states of some consequence were Cajamarca, Recuary,
Lima, Huarpa, Waru, Tiahuanaco and Atacameno, all of which used gold,
silver and copper for tools as well as jewelry. In Ecuador, beginning about
A.D. 500, there were people of the Milagro Culture, noted for elaborate
work in gold and for artificial mounds for burial places and home sites.
Some of the latter seem to be associated with ridge systems and others with
rectangular earth- works, probably made to farm lands subject to seasonal
flooding. This culture may have been an off-shoot of the Moche of Peru,
described in previous chapters. Similar farming ridges cover many
thousands of acres in Bolivia and Colombia and are present near Lake
Titicaca, although the dating of these has not been done. (Ref. 9, 62)

EASTERN SOUTH AMERICA

There were farming tribes in the Amazon rain forest, cultivating manioc.
Farther south the Tuni-Guarania tribes had migrated from the Amazon basin
into the Brazilian forest and savannah. In what in now Argentina, there was
the Aguada Culture about A.D. 600, characterized by black and yellow
pottery with feline motives. (Ref. 8, 45)

Forward to America: A.D. 601 to 700
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America: A.D. 601 to 700

AMERICA

Back to America: A.D. 501 to 600

NORTH AMERICA

THE FAR NORTH AND CANADA

(See previous and 9th centuries)

THE UNITED STATES

By 600 A.D. the cultural primacy in North America had passed from the
Hopewell area to the lower Mississippi valley, particularly in the fertile
flood plain between St. Louis and New Orleans, the land of the Mound
Builders. (Ref. 215).

In the southwest the Anasazi Indians continued to multiply, with Basket-
maker sites extending from the region of present day Lake Mead in Nevada,
through southern Utah into the southwest corner of Colorado and then down
to northwestern New Mexico and northeastern Arizona. By both
archeomagnetism dating of charred wood beams of burned pit-house
ceilings and tree-ring dating, their society can be followed in this large area
quite exactly. (Ref. 277) The Hohokam Colonial Period and the Mogollon
Cultures continued south of the Anasazi.

About A.D. 600 a distinctive group of Indians appeared near the lower end
of the Colorado River (southwestern Arizona and an extreme eastern slice
of California). These were called the Patayan (also Hakataya) and were
Yuman-speaking people who used the flood plains of the Colorado delta for
farming, had a unique paddle and anvil pottery decorated with red paint and

ground their corn on a trough-shaped metate. Living in this area for 900
years, they became then the modern Yumas, Cocopah, Maricopa,
Havasupai, Mojave and Walapai. (Ref. 45, 210) Consistent with his other
claims, Fell (Ref. 66) purports to read Islamic inscriptions on certain
Nevada rocks and feels that Arabic Libyans made these shortly after A.D.
650 when Islam came into North Africa.

MEXICO, CENTRAL AMERICA, AND THE CARIBBEAN

By A.D. 600 Teotihuacan in Mexico had a population of perhaps 150,000 to
200,000 and covered about 8 square miles. The city was laid out in a
precise grid pattern with large city buildings and apartments for families,
offering a maximum of privacy in a crowded city. There still is considerable
confusion as to the people who lived in this community.

As mentioned in a previous chapter, old Indian legend called these people
"Toltecs" and this may be accurate, even though current usage reserves this
term for the later rejuvenated civilization centered at Tula in the 9th and
10th centuries. By at least 650, Teotihuacan was beginning to show signs of
impending collapse and the reason for this is another thing that has not been
clarified. (Ref. 45, 215, 176)

The lowland Maya made a strong comeback in this century, with several
centers flourishing. At least 45,000 people lived at or around Tikal and its
sprawling pyramids, temples and house mounds covered some 38 square
miles in the dense rain forest of northern Peten.

The most elaborate structure was the so-called northern Acropolis, which
covered 2112 acres with 100 buildings and at one time 16 temples. At the
Same time the Yucatan Mayas were also active. (Ref. 45, 215) The Period V
Culture continued in Costa Rica, as noted in the last chapter.

SOUTH AMERICA

In Peru the balance of power after A.D. 600 shifted from the coast to the
highlands where the city of Tiahuanaco and the Huari military machine
dominated the central Andes by carving out empires that included not only
all of Peru and Bolivia, but also part of northern Chile. There were still
coastal people of the Nazca Culture, however, and a study of the skeleton of
an 8 year old boy from around A.D. 700 in this area showed classical Pott's
disease (tuberculosis of the spine) with a psoas abscess, renal disease,
pericarditis and terminal miliary tuberculosis of his lungs. In the north there
was still Moche influence, perhaps manifested at that time in the Chimu
Society, although dating has been difficult. (Ref. 8, 3)

Forward to America: A.D. 701 to 800
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America: A.D. 701 to 800

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NORTH AMERICA

THE FAR NORTH AND CANADA

The Dorset Arctic Culture continued its many centuries of existence in the
far north. Additional details will be given in the next chapter. We have little
definitive information about the Canadian Indian tribes at this particularly
period, but certainly the far western groups continued as previously and
may well have been the sending-off point for the Polynesian migrations into
the Pacific.

THE UNITED STATES

"The scale and flamboyance of Mississipian social dwarfed anything known
before in North America."|footnote] There were enormous ceremonial
centers, with truncated pyramids and huge plazas (as at Cohokia,
Mississipi) resembling Mexican centers, with brilliant artistry and a new
religious symbolism, reflecting a fascination with human sacrifice, sun and
fire. The people had corn fields, pottery, obsidian knives, warehouses,
administrative buildings, copper, shell, stone and wood objects. Copper
sheets were embossed with human portraits. There was apparently a
nobility who lived in special homes arranged about the temples. This
society flourished for at least 8 centuries (Ref. 215).

Quotation from "Who were the Mound Builders?", by Brian Fagan, in
Mysteries of the Past, Ref. 215, page 131.

The central and lower Mississippi cultures were centered between St. Louis
and Memphis but spread to Wisconsin, Oklahoma, and Alabama and was
still in existence when the Spanish came with the white man's diseases. The
Encyclopedia of Archeology (Ref. 45) says that the new traits of this culture
were:

1. Rectangular, flat topped mounds used for temple bases

2. New pottery - using pulverized shell for temper with new shapes and
decorations

3. Maize, as the chief crop

Some of the truncated platform temple mounds were up to 100 feet tall,
with structures for religious and/or political purposes on top. Frequently
there were several in clusters, spread over several acres. The temples area
and residences were surrounded by maize fields with the Corn Mother
goddess playing a vital role in the lives of the Mississippian people. Beans,
peas, squash and sunflowers rounded out their crops. (Ref. 267).

The historic Indian tribes of the plains such as the Pawnee, Osage, and
Arikara, for example, perpetuated the mixed horticultural and bison hunting
economy of the previous 800 to 1,000 years. Some of their ancestors’ large
villages have been excavated along the Missouri and its tributaries. (Ref.
88)

The Colonial Period of the Hohokam continued in the southwest. Their ball
courts varied greatly in size from 20 meters to over 100 meters in length.
Some believe they were used for the religious Meso-American style ball
games but others believe they were stages for a dance. (Ref. 269)
According to the remaining available arrow heads, it was sometime
between 700 and 900 that the bow and arrow began to be used, rather than
the spear, by the Mogollon tribes. These people, first to use pottery in the
southwest, developed increasing skill in this endeavor, as they made it by
coiling and scraping, not with a pottery wheel. In northern Arizona and
New Mexico the Anasazi Culture now shifted from the Basket-maker into
the Pueblo Period, with five sub-divisions extending up to modern times.
The Pueblo I period lasted two centuries from A.D. 700 to 900, with their
pottery showing some strange new shapes, including some made to look
like birds. (Ref. 66, 210, 88) Masonry rubble in the Chaco Canyon suggests

a gradual shift to ground-level construction of multi-roomed houses which
were the first pueblos. It was at this time that the Anasazi mothers started
strapping their babies to hard, wooden cradleboards producing flattening of
the back of their heads. Kivas became focal points of community and
religious practices. (Ref. 252).[ footnote]

Although it is difficult to keep Fell's (Ref. 66) chronology sorted out, he
seems to imply that it was in this century that Americans from the
southwest, perhaps with Libyan influence, explored the Pacific and mapped
Hawaii.

MEXICO AND CENTRAL AMERICA

Legend says that the Toltecs built their capital at Tula in A.D. 720. About
750 much of central Teotihucuan was looted and burned. Perhaps
developing drought and arid conditions, as well as military pressure from
the north, contributed to the down fall of this civilization, which then
shrunk to a series of villages over an area of one square kilometer. Its fall
had repercussions throughout middle America. (Ref. 215, 176)

The lowland Maya Culture continued strong and the National Geographic
Society (Ref. 155) dates extensive Mayan projects in Tikal, Guatemala, to
this century. These included a summit temple 212 feet high. At the height of
its power Tikal had 40,000 inhabitants and its nuclear area alone had more
than 3,000 separate structures and some 200 stone monuments, not to
mention reservoirs, a central acropolis and a square containing a market
area, Sweat bath and a ball-game court. A great Maya ceremonial center
was at Palenque, Mexico, and one of the most beautiful city sites of the
Classic Period was at Copan, Honduras. (Ref. 88) Some buildings, as at
Uxmal, Mexico, had cement and rubble cores faced with a veneer of thin,
finely carved limestone slabs and elaborately decorated moldings. Three
rooms of painted narrative scenes of Maya life were completed at

Bonampak, near the Quatemalan border. Henri Stierlin (Ref. 176) writes
that the Mayan Yucatan civilization was in full bloom in this century and on
through the 10th, creating new styles of architecture. Among the Maya,
medicine was carried on by two separate groups: Hemenes, priests
organized into a medical society; and the lesser, non-priestly hechiceros,
who took care of treating wounds, opening abscesses, reducing fractures,
controlling bleeding, etc. (Ref. 125)

In Costa Rica the Nicoya polychrome pottery tradition expanded and
diversified, producing the first white-slipped vessels with brilliant red,
orange and black painting. These appear to have been made almost
exclusively in the northern part of Greater Nicoya, while buff to orange-
slipped ceramics were made in centers of Guanacaste. (Ref. 265)

SOUTH AMERICA

NORTHERN AND WESTERN SOUTH AMERICA

Huari, capital of a political state which embraced most of Peru, was
overthrown and abandoned about A.D. 800 and Peru was not unified again
until the Inca conquest of the 15th century. (Ref. 8) The archeology of this
entire period of A.D. 600 to 1,000 is called the Middle Horizon and it
includes the emergence of the characteristic style of Tiahuanaco, near Lake
Titicaca. There was control of food resources and population movements
over a wide area but particularly near Tiahuanaco where the altitude is over
12,000 feet. This Middle Horizon Culture showed polychrome pottery
beakers with human, animal and other designs. There was an urban area of
perhaps one square mile with an estimated population of between 5,000 and
20,000. (Ref. 88)

Tiahuanaco had a bird-man cult (as the later Chimu and also Easter Island)
and the later Inca traditions maintained that the legendary god-men who
built Tiahuanaco extended their ear lobes and called themselves "Big Ears"
(just as the original Easter Island inhabitants). Later Spanish explorers,
particularly Pizarro's companion, Juan de Betanzos, who married an Inca

woman, recorded the legend that the white and bearded Tiahuanaco leader,
Ticci, stopped over in Cuzco on the way from Lake Titicaca to appoint a
local successor and leave orders about producing the large ears, before he
went down to the ocean, never to be seen again. This Ticci, who left the
Peruvian coast, is undoubtedly the same Tiki-with-large-ears, of Marquesan
myth, who led humanity to Polynesia but it is only on Easter Island that ear
extension assumed social importance equal to that of Peru. What is
definitely known is that Tiahuanacoid objects made in the upper Andes
began to appear in the lower, central Andes about A.D. 750. Whether this
merely represents the raiding of war parties to the lower lands or actual
domination of the lower valleys by the Tiahuanacoid chiefdoms is not
known. (Ref. 95, 62)

The remnants of the Moche kingdom continued to decline as the southern
states dominated the area. On the coast of Surinam, in what later became
Dutch Guiana, about A.D. 700 the sea encroached on the land so that the
people were obliged to build a mound as a village site and presumably to
make ridges for their crops. This mounded area was occupied continuously
until at least A.D. 900. (Ref. 167)

EASTERN SOUTH AMERICA

On the eastern part of the continent there were two settled areas - the
Amazonas and Orinoco Basin - and the southern plains. The chief
settlement in the latter was the Parana basin where archeologists have found
sites dating back to the high Holocene period. But in this 8th century great
numbers of Tupis and Guaranis came from Brazil to settle in this region.
They lived in fortified villages, eating corn, squash and fish. Even in Brazil,
ethnologists have observed cultural traits that are typical of the later
Africanized Ecuadorian coast. There are many items that speak for
continent to continent migration. The practice of circumcision, for one, may
link eastern South America with Africa, not just South Asia. (Ref. 62)

Forward to America: A.D. 801 to 900
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America: A.D. 801 to 900

AMERICA

Back to America: A.D. 701 to 800

NORTH AMERICA

THE FAR NORTH AND CANADA

We have noted previously that since at least 2,300 B.C. northern Canada
was inhabited by tribes of the Arctic Small Tool people, who, after about
600 B.C., were called the "Dorsets". A Dorset longhouse, carbon-dated to
between A.D. 800 and 900, has just recently been excavated near the shore
of the Knud Peninsula of Ellesmere Island by Professor Peter Schledermann
and his associates. (Ref. 189) This house consisted of a framework of waist-
high walls built of boulders with the base measuring 16 x 148 feet, which
was believed to be the foundation for a row of skin tents. Nearby was a 100
foot row of outdoor, individual stone hearths, 18 in number, with stone
platforms, apparently used as tables, between them. The community
probably contained 100 people and debris on the longhouse floors would
indicate that they dined well on various birds, foxes, arctic hares, seals,
walruses, belugas and even narwhals. This particular settlement was
evidently among the last for this people, as in the next century or two they
mysteriously disappeared. At about this same time in this 9th century the
Thule Culture, which appears to have involved a new, invading Inuit
people, appeared throughout northern Canada. They had dog teams, kayaks,
umiaks and winter igloos. They were seal hunters, ivory carvers and wore
tailored skin clothing. Apparently they first coexisted with the Dorset
groups, as Dorset artifacts have been found in Thule houses. (Ref. 189, 209)

Trager (Ref. 222) says that Greenland was discovered in 900 by the
Norseman Gunbjorn, who was blown off course en route to Iceland from
Norway.

THE UNITED STATES

In the central and southeastern United States the Mississippian Mound-
builders Culture continued, with perhaps an increasing Mexican influence
from extensive trading activities. This culture seemed to spread throughout
the southeastern United States just before A.D. 900. (Ref. 284) Exquisite
carved wooden figures have been found from the Key Marco Culture of
Florida, dating to as early as A.D. 800. (Ref. 215)

The Anasazia Culture, which had originally developed from the Desert
Archaic in Colorado, New Mexico and northern Arizona, had now reached
a high level of development with elaborate pueblo dwellings. At Mesa
Verde, Colorado, some apartment houses had 800 rooms. There was some
irrigation and the people were skilled in weaving, basketry, pottery,
masonry, and masonry architecture. They led a ceremonial and artistic life
and were skilled artisans in turquoise jewelry as well as wooden and bone
tools and utensils. All through this century, however, much of the southern
Colorado plateau became climatically unfit for growing corn, with even the
best areas marginal. Below elevations of 5, 500 feet the land was too dry
and above 7,500 it was too cold. As a result, the Anasazi were constantly
moving, looking for more favorable sites. Excavations indicate that of 2,000
to 3,000 inhabitants of the Dolores Valley all were gone by the next century.
Their salvation came with new irrigation practices, using shallow channels
to divert run-off onto small fields and check dams that collected eroding
soil and held the water that carried it. (Ref. 277) In archeological
classification the Pueblo I phase terminated at A.D. 900.

The Hohokams, living south and west of the Anasazi, had a much more
extensive irrigation system. Fell (Ref. 66) agrees with most that the Pima
Indians of today are direct descendants of the Hohokams but be believes
that Hohokam relics in ancient Libyan language can be identified in the
Pima chants, and this not all would concede. Fell believes that the degree of
cultural advancement of these 9th century, southwestern Indians is not
readily appreciated today. There is a petroglyph in the so-called Court of
Antiquity in Washoe County, Nevada, which he interprets as Arabic Kufi,
giving instructions on how to find the area of a circle by dividing it into six
equal sectors and then rearranging them. The method gives an
approximation of "pi" at 3.0. At that time painted pottery was becoming

more and more complex in the Mogollon area of southern New Mexico and
Chihuahua. (Ref. 64, 66, 210)

MEXICO AND CENTRAL AMERICA

Various small, non-urban centers of civilization continued in Mexico, with
the Toltec period probably just beginning. The Zapotecs had deserted
Monte Albans and the Classic Mayan central lowland sites were pretty well
abandoned in this century. The northern part of this lowland culture did not
decline as rapidly as the southern portion, but one by one the major
ceremonial centers were abandoned and their stelae mutilated and calendars
discontinued. Although the Yucatan cities lasted into the next century, the
Mayan civilization was doomed to collapse as had the Olmec and
Teotihuacan before them. Archeological studies give no real evidence of
natural calamity, pestilence, massive slaughter or starvation and the real
cause still eludes us. Some still feel that there may be some connection to
the persistence of endemic, contagious disease, possibly yellow fever,
which was called "black vomit" in the Maya pictograms. (Ref. 45, 215, 125)

Further support to the possibility of disease factors is given indirectly by the
works of John L. Stephens (Ref. 204, 205), who explored the Yucatan
peninsula in the early 19th century. He found that the entire area of the old
Maya ruins was unbelievably infested with mosquitoes and severe fevers,
undoubtedly both malaria and yellow fever. In addition, the area was made
almost unbearable by a small tick-like insect, Garrapatas, which, in addition
to the seriousness of their multiple bites, could well have been disease
Carriers.

Still another possible reason for the disappearance of the civilization is
suggested by Stephens’s writings, in that the entire area is almost devoid of
drinking water for several months each year. In place after place the only
source of water which the Indians had was a well hidden away in the depths
of a cave, sometimes several miles from the Indian village. For example:
the village of Bolonchen, with 7,000 people, had to go down 1,400 feet into
a cave to get their water during 4 or 5 months each year. It would seem
within the realm of possibility that if two or three drought years occurred

together, even such a difficult cave well supply system might have failed
and the people would have had to leave.

It must be admitted, however, that most modern writers tend to attach a
political and sociological significance to the Maya decline. The theory is
that an aristocracy controlled the great temples and religious centers and
taxed the surrounding peasants up to a point where the latter rebelled and
destroyed not only the aristocracy but their material effects - the temples
and pyramids, etc., as well.

The Yucatec Society, which seems to have sprung from the original,
lowland, parent Mayan Society, was generally inferior to the latter but did
have considerable metallurgic advancements and extensive geographical
locations on the peninsula. As early as 1840 Stephens had uncovered 44
ancient cities, including such as Merido, Mayapan, Uxmal, Tankuche,
Xcoch, Kabah, Chack, Skabachtshe, Labna, Kewick, Xampon, Chunhuhu,
Hiokowitz, Kuepak, Zekilna, Labphak, Iturbide, Macoba, Bolonchen and
Chichen Itza. A few further details about some of these ruins, as Stephens
found them, may be of interest.

Mayapan was situated on a great plain, thickly overgrown with vegetation.
The circumference of the area of the remnants was about 3 miles. Included
was a pyramid 60 feet high, 100 feet square at the base, with 4 grand
Staircases. This was the original capital of the Maya when the entire
peninsula was united under one king. Supposedly Mayapan was destroyed
by warring chiefs in 1420, only 270 years after the founding of the

city[ footnote] Uxmal had very elaborate hieroglyphics over doorways and
great numbers of subterranean cisterns, plaster-lined, apparently for storage
of water. Ruins near Tankuche Hacienda had fabulous paintings in red,
green, yellow and blue colors. In the remains of the city of Xcoch there was
a well of great depth in a cave, with a deep track worn in the rock, made by
long continued tread of thousands of people. This cave was known by the
local Indians in the 19th century and ascribed to remote people they called
"antiguos". In Kabah there were beautifully carved heiroglyphics on lintels,
done so finely that it is difficult to know how it was accomplished without
metal instruments. At Chack there was another well in a deep, many layered
cave as the only water supply over a three mile area. The well was some

1,500 feet down from the cave entrance. Ruined cities were found about
every 9 miles, as Stephens trudged through the jungle. At Sachey there was
a paved road of pure white stone and the Indians said that it had originally
run from Kabah to Uxmal, for couriers carrying letters written on leaves or
bark. This was a recurring legend. (Ref. 205)

All of Stephens's dates seem to be more recent than current dating processes
indicate.

The National Geographic (Ref. 155) calls A.D. 900 the end of the Classic
Period of Mesoamerican society. The people of this society shared a
common heritage of shared customs, beliefs and artifacts, such as
hieroglyphic writing, a ritual ball game played in an I-shaped court, blood
offerings in the forms of both self-mutilation and human sacrifices, temples
on pyramid platforms, arithmetical systems using a base of 20, use of a
calendar of 365 days, with a 200 day ritual calendar besides, and some
common gods. About the only point of differentiation between the Yucatan
and the Mexican peoples was language. Absent were the keystone arch,
plow, alphabetic writing, glass, explosives, the wheel for transport and iron.
Copper and gold had appeared only about A.D. 700. (Ref. 88, 205)
Additional Notes

SOUTH AMERICA

We mentioned in the last chapter that both the Huari and Tiahuacaco had
developed great empires. The extent of the latter one is indicated by Engle's
1974 excavation of a 23 foot raft in the far south of Peru containing typical
Tiahuanaco decorations. It was composed of several cylindrical reed rollers,
held together by small ropes. The appearance of Tiahuanacoid motifs in the
coastal valleys corresponded with the disappearance of the Mochica themes
farther north and the Maranga and Nazca ones farther south. Neither of the
great empires had very long lasting effects, however, and by the end of this
9th century decadence had already reappeared in some areas as the old
coastal traditions again began to dominate. (Ref. 62)

Note:The Late Classic period of Central America (A.D. 600-900) shows
another active time of tool making in the region of Colha, Belize. Twenty
work-shops of this period have been excavated, identified by mounds of
waste flakes and broken tools. Some of these mounds are 1.5 meters deep
and cover up to 500 square meters. The end of the Late Classic may have
been a violent period of Colha. There is a skull pit containing 28
decapitated heads of men, women and children, with the skulls placed on
fragments of Terminal Classic polychromes. The pit was covered with
debris from the burning and destruction of adjacent buildings. (Ref. 304)

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CONDMDUBRWN FE

America: A.D. 901 to 1000

AMERICA

Back to America: A.D. 801 to 900

NORTH AMERICA

THE FAR NORTH AND CANADA

We have previously mentioned the Thule Inuit Culture which spread all
across the Canadian arctic and Greenland after about 800 A. D. No one
knows if the Thule people drove off or simply absorbed the Dorset tribes.
Perhaps the latter simply couldn't adapt to the warming climatic change that
occurred about this time. In summer the Thule people lived in tents, as had
the Dorsets, but their winter houses were better. Foundations of these
structures were dug into the ground with tunnel entrances, which trapped
warm air inside, and walls and roofs were added of stone, sod or
occasionally the baleen and bones bowhead whales. (Ref. 45, 189)

The eastern coast of Greenland is only about 250 statue-miles across the
Denmark Strait from Iceland, so it is not remarkable that Icelanders soon
knew of its existence. Of course the eastern coast of Greenland is and was
very inhospitable to man and the journey around its southern tip to the more
livable western coast was somewhat difficult. The fact that the climatic
conditions were different in the 10th century and that at A.D. 1,000 parts of
Greenland were actually green, probably helped. At any rate, Erik the Red,
known as a criminal both in his original Jaeder, Norway home and also in
Iceland, took to the sea about 980, landing and exploring southern
Greenland, a land which had been reported as seen by another Icelander
some 50 years or more previously. After three years of exploration, Eric
returned to Iceland, got into more trouble and organized one of the largest
arctic expeditions on record to return to Greenland for permanent
settlement. He obtained 35 cargo vessels| footnote] with several hundred

men, women and children and all their possessions, including horses, cattle,
sheep, pigs and dogs. Only 14 of these open ships were actually able to
round the stormy south cape of Greenland to safely land on the quieter west
coast, but there they built their settlements [footnote]. Seals, fish, whales
and sea-birds were abundant and fur and walrus ivory could be exported to
Europe.

These were broader and stronger than the fast, slender Viking attack ships.
(Ref. 95).

There were two main settlements - Brattahlid and one farther north near the
modern Godthab.

At the very end of the century Leif Erikson, son of Eric the Red, while on a
regular trade trip back to Norway, was entertained by the enthusiastic
Christian King Olav Tryggveson and commissioned to take a Catholic
priest and several religious teachers back to Greenland. Leif departed
Norway just before Olav's death in 1,000 and did bring Christianity to
Greenland and shortly thereafter allegedly to Vinland[footnote] on the true
North American continent. This mainland had been accidentally discovered
by Bjarno Herjolfsson from Iceland when on his first trip to Greenland he
had missed that large island and hit Newfoundland.

The "grapes" of Vinland may well have been mountain cranberries, wild
currents or gooseberries and the wild "wheat" described by Eric may have
been Lyme grass. (Ref. 222).

Recent excavations on the northern most tip of Newfoundland have
revealed remains of houses, boat sheds and bronze equipment, obviously
Norse and dated to about A.D. 1000. (Ref. 237, 95, 215) Brandel quotes
from a lecture by Henri Pirenne: "America (when the Vikings reached it)
was lost as soon as it was discovered, because Europe did not yet need it.
[footnote]

The quotation is from Braudel (Ref. 260), page 335.

THE UNITED STATES

In mid-continent the Mississippi Culture flourished. In the Ozarks of
Arkansas, Oklahoma and Mississippi, bluff dwellers constructed rock-

shelters, caves and open village sites. Baskets of twilled weave, flour sieves
and containers, hunting, fishing, farming bone hoes and tools as well as
antler and wooden digging sticks and pottery have been found. These sites
were occupied throughout this century and after. It is probable that at about
the end of the century the Mississippi group of tribes began to feel the sting
of Iroquois attacks from the south, as there are reasons for suspecting that
these fierce warriors came via the Gulf of Mexico, probably from South
America. (Ref. 66)

Marvin F. Kivett, of the Nebraska State Historical Society, has identified the
"Initial Coalescent Culture" that existed from about 900 to 1,400 in the
Dakotas. This culture was formed when corn farmers of the central plains
(now Kansas, Nebraska and Oklahoma) were forced by droughts to move
up the river valleys northward into the Dakotas, where they merged with the
initial middle Missouri Culture already established along the river of the
same name. Today their descendants are believed to be the Arikara Indians
of North Dakota. (Ref. 45, 241)

In the west the Fremont rock art existed at the same time along the Fremont
River in Utah as the Anasazi Pueblo Culture existed a little farther south, all
of this dating from 750 to 1,200. Construction began on the Pueblo Bonita
at Chaco Canyon in New Mexico about A.D. 900. Although building
materials of mud, stones and wood was the same as those used by the Mesa
Verde Indians, the architecture was markedly superior in principle as well
as in technical detail and artistry. The population appears to have been fairly
consistent, running between 800 and 1,200 people. (Ref. 88) Studies of
excavation sites and skeletons have revealed much about these people. One-
third died in infancy; forty years meant old age, with teeth worn to the gums
from the grit that ended up in the corn meal from the metate, jaw abscesses
and arthritis. Clothes were made of hides and cotton cloth, stitched with
yucca leaf fibers. Hundreds of tons of sandstone blocks were carried
varying distances for construction of the pueblos. The men spent much of
their time searching for firewood and hunting for animal food. When the
hunt was poor, the remaining protein deficient diet sapped strength and
when famine did occur there may have been cannibalism. (Ref. 277)

Snaketown, on the Gila River southeast of Phoenix, Arizona, was the
capital city of the Hohokam until A.D. 1,200. In the 10th century these
people entered the Sedentary Period. Population increased, as evidenced by
the more numerous villages and longer canals. Specialized villages
procured marine shells from the Gulf of California and worked them into
jewelry that was traded as far north as Flagstaff. (Ref. 269) Their technique
included a method of etching designs on shells using an acid solution made
from the giant cactus, saguaro. (Ref. 88, 65, 210)

Harold Gladwin, in his book History of the Ancient Southwest [footnote],
gives the end of this century as the time of the first serious incursion of the
Athapascan tribesmen into the Pueblo areas. These were the Apaches, who
had slowly migrated down from the northern reaches of Canada, bringing
their variety of the Athapascan tongue. This century also was the time of
the Pueblo II period, with still further pottery changes.

As quoted by Tamarin and Glubok (Ref. 210).

At A.D. 1,000 the Mogollon farming period was coming to an end, but in
the Mimbres River area of southern New Mexico, the pottery was decorated
with very beautiful and complex triangles, scrolls and zigzag lines with life-
like decorations of animals and men inside the bowls. No one knows what
happened to these people. They may have been absorbed by others coming
down from the northern plateaus. There is little question but what the
modern Hopi and Zuni Indians, later considered as part of the pueblo
builders, were influenced by the Mogollons. (Ref. 210)

In southern California the desert tradition continued until the end of the
century when present day Yuma and Shoshone Indians may have moved
into the area. The Shoshone language is related to the later Aztec. (Ref. 8)

MEXICO, CENTRAL AMERICA, AND THE CARIBBEAN

The present day concept is that the Toltecs originated as a blend of northern
nomads and civilized Mexican groups in central Mexico, but they became
Mexico's greatest militaristic power for two centuries. The Classic Period in
the northern Lowlands ended with the invasion of these Toltecs, who

established themselves at Chichen Itze in Yucatan about 1,000[footnote],
ruling the native people, although their homeland embraced much of
northern Mexico and their capital was at Tula, about 60 miles north of
present Mexico City. The Toltec style pyramid erected in Chichen Itze was
dedicated to Quetzatcoatl, whose Mayan name was Kukulcan and the old
Mayan and Mexican cultures blended there. The true Mayan civilization
was gone and had given way to the Yucatec in Central America, with a
major religious and political center remaining at Chichen Itze. In the
highlands there was no actual collapse of the previous culture but even here
Toltec influences began to appear. The Huastic civilization at Veracruz
continued and burial chambers at that time indicate that there were
elaborate entombment ceremonies, with the deceased accompanied in the
grave by an attendant and various objects indicating considerable wealth.
Other ideas about the Toltecs have been mentioned on pages 427 and 451.
Old Maya legends apparently confused their own history with that of the
Toltecs, whom they considered their ancestors. Stephens (Ref. 205) quotes
from Principal Epochs of the Ancient History of Yucatan, written in the
Maya language from memory by an old Indian and translated in the early
19th century by Don Pio Perez, to the effect that the Toltecs first came to
Chichen Itza in 432, stayed until 576 and then returned a second time in
936.

An interesting side light to 10th century Mexico has been added by Jeffrey
Wilkerson's excavations (Ref. 236) at El Tajin in Vera Cruz, where some ten
ball courts have been found. The "game" was an important religious
ceremonial, using a solid rubber ball about six inches in diameter and
propelled from one end of the court to the other by use of hips and perhaps
at times elbows, upper arms and knees. A player, perhaps pre-selected, and
perhaps impersonating a god, was decapitated at the conclusion of the
"same". El Tajin's rulers were named in the ancient Meso-American fashion
according to their birth date in the 260 day Sacred Round religious calendar
(composed of 20 rotating day names and 13 numerical prefixes). The chief
ruler in this century, who may have been one of the last, was called 13
Rabbit and he was always represented in drawings by a rabbit on top of
three dots and two bars, over his head. (See America: 0 to A.D. 100,
regarding this mathematical notation). After 13 Rabbit's time, El Tajin

appears to have been destroyed, perhaps by the Totanacs who live there

Ritual human sacrifices occurred throughout the Classic Period in Central
America, even in the Classic Maya Society and the Late Post-classic Period
(A.D. 900-1,400) showed this on an ever increasing scale. (Ref. 273) The
history of the bow and arrow in this region is difficult to clarify. It appears
that this weapon was introduced to the Early Post- classic Maya about A.D.
1,000 by mercenary Toltecs from the Valley of Mexico. The bow then
replaced the atlatl, which had previously been introduced by the
Teotihuacanos. Actual descriptions of the use of bows and arrows by Maya,
however, did not appear until some centuries later. (Ref. 283)

Costa Rica continued in the archeological Period V, with an increasing
preference for level, fertile land suitable for agriculture. Active trade with
other parts of Central America is revealed by the discovery of such objects
as alabaster jars from Honduras and early varieties of Plumbate pottery, a
ware with a metallic-type, vitrified surface made in Guatemala or El
Salvador. (Ref. 265)

SOUTH AMERICA

By about A.D. 900 the Aymaras Indians established a culture in Bolivia
(known as "upper" Peru) and this existed for some 300 years until they were
subjugated by the Incas. By the year 1,000, or even earlier, all coastal
evidence of Tiahuanacoan influence was gone. The invaders, if they were
actually such, had blended with the local coastal populations. According to
radio-carbon datings, nothing of value was produced in any place about
Lake Titicaca after A.D. 1,000 and the beautiful pottery and fabrics had
been replaced by motifs of Collao. Actual archeological knowledge of the
centuries just prior to the Spanish conquest, however, is very poor. Except
for the presence of two large centers - Tiahuanaco in Bolivia and Huari in
Peru - actual dates and duration unknown, there is little concrete
information. (Ref. 62)

Forward to America: A.D. 1001 to 1100

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America: A.D. 1001 to 1100

AMERICA

Back to America: A.D. 901 to 1000

NORTH AMERICA

THE FAR NORTH AND CANADA

The Arctic Thule Culture of northern Canada, northwestern Alaska and
western Greenland existed at least from about A.D. 1000 to 1800. The
people lived in circular houses, partially subterranean, with whalebone, turf
and stone roofs and they used dog sleds with the dogs harnessed in a fan-
shape, rather than in tandem. They had Umiak and Kayak boats and
represented the final Eskimo Culture of the northern maritime tradition.
(Ref. 189) Please also see adjacent modules.

Rose Palmer (Ref. 165) of the Smithsonian Institute confirms the distinct
physical and language characteristics of the Northwest coastal Indians. She
describes the Nootka and Kwakiutl people of Vancouver Island as having
long, distinct faces with high hooked noses. They used copper and had well
built houses 40 to 60 feet square, with gable roof s, fireplaces and doors
facing the sea, along with family totems. The Haida of the Queen Charlotte
Islands were also of a unique Indian type, larger, more stalwart and of
lighter complexion. The women were tall and athletic in contrast to other
typical Indian women, who tend to be short and fat. The Haida made long
voyages in dug-out canoes of red cedar, some carrying 100 persons and
equipment, to as far as Vancouver Island and Puget Sound. Wood carvings
on totem poles often 50 to 60 feet high, formed part of the front of their
buildings. All of the north coastal Indians remained fairly well isolated
from the remainder of the continent and other Indian tribes by virtue of the
high coastal mountain ranges which made access inland very difficult. (Ref.
95, 165)

Carbon- 14 dating of recent excavations of several buildings and a great
hall of an old Viking settlement in northern New Foundland, puts the date
as A.D. 1060 (+70 years).

This settlement was probably founded by Leif Erickson, who also
apparently went ashore on Baffin Island, calling it "Helluland" and then on
down the American coast to Labrador, which he called "Markland".
"Vinland", also described by the Norse, undoubtedly was somewhere on the
North American coast, possibly Rhode Island, Massachusetts, Labrador or
Newfoundland. The latter seems most probable because of the recent
excavations, but if so, its wine industry certainly disappeared quickly. At
any rate, subsequent to Leif's visit to Vinland, Thorfinn Karlsefne settled
this new land with 60 men and 5 women, along with cattle and other
animals. Although at first friendly with the native aborigines, eventually
there was war, with the Indians attacking in swarms by canoe, ultimately
driving out the newcomers. Two Indian boys were captured, however,
subsequently taught Norwegian, baptized and taken to Greenland where the
colonies were thriving. The warm climatic situation of this century, which
allowed an ice-free North Atlantic Ocean, certainly was a factor in these

THE UNITED STATES

The Mississippian and related cultures continued to exist in the mid-
continent. Please see the preceding chapters. It should be mentioned, in
passing, that Barry Fell (Ref. 66) feels that numerous artifacts which have
been found along the Mississippi and Arkansas rivers, as well as among the
Algonquin and Iroquois Indians, are in fact replicas of old Irish-Norse coins
and English pennies which had been paid as Danegeld, and originally
distributed along the North American coast and rivers by additional
voyages of Leif Erickson. Gloria Farley, a co-worker of Fell, has described
finding Norse runes in Oklahoma rock inscriptions, dating to about 1050.
(Ref. 215, 66)

Southeastern Indians knew much more about metallurgy than generally
realized. They made decorative and utilitarian objects from lead and had

acquired and used copper from local sources. They fashioned beads,
bracelets, earrings, ceremonial knives and axes, gorgets, and breast plates,
some elaborately decorated with an eagle or hawk. This metallurgy seemed
to be associated with the so-called Southeastern Ceremonial Complex, a
cultural association variously called the Eagle, Hawk, Buzzard or Southern
Cult. It was associated with fire and sun worship and bird motifs. Sun
circles, bi-lobed arrows, forked eyes, hand and eye and crosses can all be
found engraved on copper and shell. Before Europeans arrived the south
was not rural, as the aborigines lived in towns. Although no one is sure of
the location, there were Cofitachiqui, Mabila and Apalachee Indian centers,
each of whose populations numbered in the thousands. Some were fortified
and palisaded. A pole 50 or more feet in height erected on a small mound
in a ceremonial ball game area was important in the culture. Certain death
practices were similar throughout the South, in that bones of the dead were
cleaned and stored in boxes or baskets. Granaries were commonplace and
any town of consequence had a sweat house, or sauna. (Ref. 267)

Some writers have stated than in the southwest the Hohokam way of life
began to disappear as the people pulled back to their original homeland in
the desert. (Ref. 210) More recent material indicates, however, that they had
not yet even reached their "Classical Period". (Ref. 269) The Anasazi
and/or related pueblo people, survived at Bonito Pueblo (Chaco Canyon,
New Mexico) with their new buildings showing a masonry of facing stones
carefully applied to rubble cores, a Mexican technique suggesting contact
with missionaries or traders from Mexico. This concept is disputed by
some, however, when they point out that new road systems of this period
appeared to radiate out of Chaco northward, rather than to the south and
that many of the Chaco artifacts, particularly marine shells, were probably
acquired by trade with other, native southwest tribes, such as the Hohokam.
The inhabitants of Chaco Canyon cut down some 50,000 trees for pueblo
construction and fuel, so that the once extensive forests were stripped,
allowing erosion of the canyon. Some of the heavy logs for roofing beams
may have been carried as far as 30 miles. To elaborate on the remarks
above, Pueblo Bonito was reconstructed in this 11th century, with workmen
tearing out old walls and building new ones of a core-and-veneer type
involving outer walls of sandstone blocks with earth and ruble in the center.
Lower walls were more than 3 feet thick, tapering as they rose, until the

rear wall was 5 stories high. When finished this pueblo held 650 rooms and
may have been occupied by 1200 persons. Seven other great pueblos were
also constructed, some only a few hundred yards apart, each of similar
design, in one complex. Overall there were about a dozen pueblo complexes
in the Chaco Canyon with well over 2,000 rooms. At least 70 communities,
similar in design but generally smaller, existed outside the canyon from a
few to 100 miles away. Recent aerial studies have indicated that the great
road system, mentioned above, connected these outliers to the center. The
roads ran arrow straight, with cuts through some mounds and steps carved
in cliff faces, all up to 30 feet wide. One of the larger outlying pueblos was
on the San Juan River, 40 miles north of Chaco and known now as the
Salmon ruins. Started in 1088 it was completed in 5 years and contained
300 rooms. Huge wooden beams were obtained in the La Plata mountains,
more than 75 miles away. It had a great kiva and great tower with 6 feet
thick walls rising from the second story of the town. The walls were
supported by solid buttresses.

The Bonito people monitored the solar cycles with a solar observatory on
Fajada Butte. Spiral patterns carved into native rock caught shafts of light
between other rocks in a precise way, which indicated the solstices and
equinoxes. A scarcity of burials at the Great Chaco complex has posed
some questions and resulted in numerous theories. Was this only a large
ceremonial center serving as a mecca for pilgrims coming in on the great
road system? Or was it a type of federal city for handling the outlier's trade
and political alliances? (Ref. 277) Near the end of the century the pueblo
dwellers increased their defenses, building watch towers, doubling wall
thicknesses and restricting access to their homes, suggesting that the
Apaches were reaching this territory. (Ref. 210)

According to ancient Indian beliefs the San Francisco Peaks| footnote |
which are surrounded by a large volcanic area in northern Arizona, are the
home of Kachina spirits. Some Indians had lived in pit-houses near those
peaks since about A.D. 600 but suddenly in A.D. 1065 there was a violent
volcanic eruption, with a cone of cinders and ash thrown a thousand feet
high and a stream of lava flowed on the ground. Black ash covered 800
square miles and the terrified Indians left. When they eventually cautiously
returned they found that the ash had trapped water beneath and had

produced a very fertile area which could be farmed with very little extra
moisture needed. Archeologists have given those Indians the name
"Senagua", meaning "without water". The rich soil attracted others,
including Hohokam, Mogollon and Cohonina and there was an interchange
of ideas and cultures. (Ref. 210)

These peaks are just north of Flagstaff and Williams, Arizona.

The Mogollon Culture of southern New Mexico and eastern Arizona had
continued through the centuries in various stages of development. The
people of that area now began to build houses in the pueblo style with
buildings above ground. They had fine, polychrome member pottery, some
with red designs on brown and some with rectangular designs with white
stripes. Other pottery was black on white with complicated curvilinear and
rectilinear designs. Cotton was grown and used as cloth. (Ref. 45)

A unique Indian culture, which was earlier considered of unknown
antecedents and descendants, flourished about 950 to 1 150 in southwestern
New Mexico, just east of what is now Silver City. They were called
Mimbrenos, after their river valley and were peaceful corn growers who
created some of the most beautiful of American Indian pottery. This had
imaginative decorations and was all accomplished without the use of the
potter's wheel or the kiln. This work is coveted by museums and collectors
throughout the world. It is known now that these people were part of the
Mogollons. (Ref. 223, 210)

MEXICO AND CENTRAL AMERICA

The Yucatec and the Toltec civilizations, which were discussed in the last
chapter, were both failing by the end of this century. According to tradition,
drought and sickness took their toll among the Toltecs and their monarchy
ended in 1052[footnote]. Their land then lay devastated for a century. On
the Gulf coast, the Huastec Society appeared at about this time. (Ref. 205)
Trager (Ref. 222) refers to the epidemic and decline as occurring in the
Mayan Empire, but this is probably just another error in that text.

SOUTH AMERICA

In this century the coastal societies came under the control of the Chimu
(formerly Chimor), who built the great capital of Chan Chan near the
present city of Trujillo, near the sea. This was in the old Mochican area but
was an entirely new capital. From this century until the subjugation of these
people by the Incas, some four centuries later, the sequence of events is
very unclear. Some of the buildings of Chan Chan are very large and may
have been built in different periods. Some believe part of the edifices was
constructed by invaders from the north (even from as far away as Ecuador)
in about 1200.

Near Chan Chan the powerful Chicama River could be used, via a long
canal, for irrigating a huge desert zone. (Ref. 62)

The Diaguites, originally of the semi-arid Argentine Andes, probably
existed at this time and continued to live there until confrontation with the
Spaniards some 500 years later. They have left ruins of small fortified
settlements on easily defensible crests, approached by narrow, paved roads,
always located near a river or spring. Farmland was terraced to save rain
water. They made rock carvings and unusual pottery, one type of which is
the "Santa Maria" urn, with a wide neck and side handles. (Ref. 62)

Forward to America: A.D. 1101 to 1200
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America: A.D. 1101 to 1200

AMERICA

Back to America: A.D. 1001 to 1100

NORTH AMERICA

THE FAR NORTH AND CANADA

The Thule Arctic and the Northwest Indian cultures have been described in
the preceding chapters. The west Greenland settlement of Norse was
prospering in this 12th century and there were at least 16 stone churches
and a fine cathedral at Gardar. Pope Paschal IIT appointed Erik Gnupsson as
the first bishop of Greenland and Vinland in 1112. At this time the southern
half of Canada undoubtedly had a great number of Indian tribes, but
information about them is scanty. The Norse and the Indians were
apparently hostile to each other. (Ref. 66, 95) Additional Notes

THE UNITED STATES

In the central and southern parts of the United States the Mississippi and
coalescent cultures continued as noted in the preceding chapters. In the
southwest, some- time after 1150 the Mesa Verde Anasazi constructed the
famous Cliff Palace, some 325 feet long, 100 feet deep, with many
subterranean, sacred rooms and turret-like towers. In mid-century, however,
the building stopped and the population of this and the Pueblo Bonito in
Chaco Canyon, New Mexico, began to decline and the pueblos were soon
abandoned, perhaps as a result of loss of arable fields as the water table
lowered or incident to the severe deforestation mentioned in the last
chapter. It has been estimated that Chaco Canyon's population dropped to
less than 20% of its 11th century peak. (Ref. 252) Increasing cold may have
been another factor. Only the Mesa Verde people hung on in a slightly

better climate. (Ref. 277) Other sources believe, however, that these pueblo
Indians were driven or fled as the result of invasion by barbarian
Athapascans (Apache and Navaho). In the northwestern part of Arizona at
Wupatki in the sunset crater area of the Sinague, there was a structure
containing over 100 rooms, with 3 stories, as well as an open air
amphitheater resembling a ceremonial Anasazi kiva and a ball court. But
the volcanic soils were now drained of their nutrients and farming was
getting less productive. (Ref. 210)

McGuire and Schiffer (Ref. 269) state that the Classic period of the
Hohokam began about A.D. 1150, to last for 300 years. This was
characterized by adobe compounds enclosing rectangular rooms and plazas,
platform mounds, extensive irrigation canals and polychrome and polished
redware ceramics. The red-on-buff pottery was distinctive of all Hohokam
sites. Hundreds of villages were scattered over the Gila and Lower Salt
rivers of central Arizona. In the past other writers have claimed that the
Hohokam had begun a sharp decline by this century and that any
advancements seen were due to invasion of the area by another group, the
Salado. This view has been discarded in the last 5 to 8 years. The most
obvious change in the Classic period was in architecture. Multi-storied
houses appeared and the canal system was further refined, with extensive
networks and some canals carried water as far as 32 kilometers. Polished
red vessels tended to replace the earlier red-on-buff pottery. Although some
northern frontier villages were abandoned at this time, the population of the
Gila-Salt Basin increased to perhaps 20,000. (Ref. 269)

MEXICO AND CENTRAL AMERICA

Tula, the capital city of the Toltecs, was violently destroyed in the middle of
this century. Although it has not been completely excavated the indications
are that it was a large city with all the principal features of Toltec art and
architecture.

A new Indian civilization appears to have been in an active growth phase at
this time in Aztlan[footnote]. No one is sure of the precise location of
Aztlan, although Professor Sigberto Jimenez Morena suggests that it was an

island village on the San Pedro River delta, some 450 miles northwest of
present Mexico City, now called Mexcallitan. This has been called the
Venice of Mexico because in rainy seasons the streets flood and the people
move about by canoe. The adjacent Mangrove swamps have thousands of
herons, including at least 15 different species. The Aztec legends say that
their small tribe moved from Aztlan into the area of Tula, once the capital
of the great Toltec Empire, and there they picked up what they could of the
Toltec civilization from its descendants. Toynbee (Ref. 220) calls this
nascent Aztec Society the "Mexic" and in this 12th century it consisted of
various small states, with Chichimec people forming petty kingdoms along
the Valley of Mexico. One site was Tenayuca. (Ref. 138, 220, 146, 88)
Aztlan is the source of the word "Aztec" and means "people of heron
place”.

SOUTH AMERICA

The greatest activity of the 12th century in South America continued to be
in the region of northern Peru and what is now Ecuador. By mid-century the
Chimus, in their great kingdom of Chimor, had revived the old Moche
Kingdom, in a political and geographic sense. They were great builders and
extended the old Moche irrigation and road systems. Their black pottery,
however, was in contrast to the vigorous polychromatic Mochica pieces.
Gold was apparently plentiful and was used chiefly in the pure state,
although sometimes alloyed with silver or copper. Fantastic, intricate and
delicate golden objects of the Chimu were found in 1937 in the area of
Lambayeque, Peru, near the Ecuador border. The population of the nation
may have been 250,000 and Chan Chan, the capital, covered 3 1/2 square
miles. Ca jamarquilla and Pachacamac were additional large cities, each
larger than Rome or Alexandria.

Five or six hundred miles south of the Chimu the Chincha Basin was also
being rejuvenated on a large scale, with cultivated land extending over
about 12 miles on the formerly sterile sea coast terraces. Some 37,000 acres
of land of the Canete Basin were now utilized and this was accomplished by
construction of lateral canals 24 to 36 miles long. The Ica and Nazca basins
remained quiet. (Ref. 62)

According to Inca myth it was in this century that Manco Capac and his
sister-wife, Mana Ocllo, left the Island of the Sun in Lake Titicaca and went
forth as son and daughter of the Sun God, Inti, to found the Inca Empire,
"The Kingdom of Gold". (Ref. 10)

The Diaguites remained in the Argentine Andes and, although dating in
inconclusive, sometime in this approximate time-frame they practiced an
advanced metallurgy, using copper ore pulverized on stone mortars and
mixed with zinc, gold and silver. This was then melted in hearths, using the
wind as bellows, and finally poured into molds. Gold was beaten into very
thin sheets and used to decorate masks and jewelry by the reverse
hammering technique. (Ref. 62)

Forward to America: A.D. 1201 to 1300
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CONAMAUBRWNEFR

Note:Some 300 farms had been established in Greenland by this century.
(Ref. 301)

America: A.D. 1201 to 1300

AMERICA

Back to America: A.D. 1101 to 1200

NORTH AMERICA

THE FAR NORTH AND CANADA

Runic inscriptions left by Norse explorers about A.D. 1300 have been found
near Upemavik far up in Baffin Bay on the western Greenland coast. In
addition, recent excavations in an old Thule Arctic Culture settlement still
farther north, beyond the tip of Greenland on the Canadian Island of
Skraeling, have revealed links of chain-mail, iron boat rivets, parts of barrel
bottoms, pieces of oak (not native to that part of Canada) and European-
style knife blades and spear points. All of this would indicate that the
Viking Norse explored much farther north in America than previously
believed, although at the moment one cannot say with certainty that these
Norse artifacts were not carried north by Thule contacts made farther south.
(Ref. 189)

The southern Greenland settlements were still very much Catholic and a
crisis arose because of the absence of grain for bread and grapes for the
sacraments. The local parish asked Rome for permission to substitute meat
and beer, but Pope Gregorius personally insisted that at least bread be used.
(Ref. 138)

No special information concerning the Inuit of the far northern climes and
the Indian populations of central and western Canada during this 13th
century has been located, and we assume that life continued in much the
same fashion as noted in previous modules.

THE UNITED STATES

The Missouri River Valley Indians continued to farm in the Dakotas and the
Mississippian Culture persevered with great ceremonial centers at Cahokia,
Moundville and Etowah. The latter was a large site in Georgia, dating from
1200 to 1700, which was a fortified farming village with three temple
mounds and carved stone figures of men, some of which were 15 to 30 feet
in height. The figures were portrayed in the sitting position, suggesting a
Mexican influence. The largest of the mounds there was 70 feet high with
380 square feet of base and probably containing 4,000,000 cubic feet of
earth. (Ref. 215, 45)

The Mesa Verda cliff dwellers began construction of a great masonry
temple, sun oriented and containing kivas three walls thick. Recently,
excavations in the Montezuma Valley near Cortez, Colorado, have indicated
tremendous pueblo type buildings and kivas on level ground. Dr. Arthur
Rohn has identified 103 kivas at Yellowjacket and more than 80 at Mud
Springs. It may be that the real center of the Mesa Verde culture was not on
the mesa, but in this valley where conditions were better for agriculture. All
of these complexes reached their peaks in this 13th century, but by 1300 the
entire region was abandoned for good. Some of the Anasazi moved south to
confront the Mogollons in the mountains, some simply went north and
joined their relatives who were the ancestors of present day Hopis and some
went eastward across the continental divide to the Rio Grande, where they
developed the final phase of their culture from south of Albuquerque to
Taos - the modern Pueblo Indians. The movement included the Sinaguas,
who went to the Verde River Valley and built clusters of masonry houses
along the cliff sides of the high mesas, there. The reasons for the rather
sudden dispersion of these people are still a mystery. Tree ring studies
indicate severe drought between 1260 and 1300 and it is possible that crops
withered and the inhabitants had to move to eat. Farther to the southwest
most authorities would agree that the Hohokam Classic period continued
deep in the Arizona desert, building up to a peak of activity in the next
century. (Ref. 210, 215, 64, 277)

MEXICO AND CENTRAL AMERICA

Chichen Itza on the Yucatan peninsula was abandoned by the Toltecs
sometime before 1224 but a sparse native population remained. Constant
local wars of the next three centuries destroyed 4,000 years of civilization
in this land. In north Mexico, the Aztecs were one of the Nahua tribes of the
Anahuac Valley, apparently having moved inland from their probable origin
in the San Pedro River delta, and for centuries there were petty tribal wars
in this area also, with sometimes one tribe prevailing and sometimes
another. The Aztecs were not yet in power and they came south as refugees,
picking up remnants of the Toltec civilization. The Aztec authority,
Professor Miguel Leon-Portilla writes| footnote] that the only thing they
brought with them was an indomitable will. (Ref. 88, 176, 138)

As quoted by MacDowell (Ref. 138)

In Central America, proper, there was no quantum jump in cultural
achievement in these pre-Columbian centuries. The archaeological Period
VI continued in Costa Rica with the zenith reached in the lost-wax method
of casting gold and tumbaga (a gold-copper alloy) pendants, particularly in
the southern Diquis area. Similar cultures continued in Panama and other
adjacent regions. In none of these countries did a State-centered society
develop. (Ref. 265, 266)

SOUTH AMERICA

Legend has it that there were small Inca tribe chiefdoms in a remote upper
Andean valley in this 13th century, but nothing is really known for certain
about their origin.

Chan Chan (300 miles northwest of Lima) was the capital of the Chimu
people and at this time it had 50,000 inhabitants and covered an area of 9
square miles, with a strictly rectangular layout. A canal system, including
one over 50 miles long, supplied the city with water. The city has been well
preserved because of the sand which later covered it and the lack of rain.
The Andes were just now coming out of the past into modern times and
their great irrigation systems played a key role. (Ref. 62, 176)

Araucanian and Diaguite communities continued in the south Andes and
some of the latter people migrated from the eastern to the Pacific slopes,
perhaps coming under some influence of a Peruvian successor society to the
Nazca political system called the Ika- Chincha chiefdom. The western
Diaguites had a stratified society dominated by a warrior class and their
decorations showed men wearing feather head-dresses and carrying spear
throwers and long spears. (Ref. 176)

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America: A.D. 1301 to 1400

AMERICA

Back to America: A.D. 1201 to 1300

NORTH AMERICA

THE FAR NORTH AND CANADA

The Thule Inuit were exceptional arctic hunters, using a variety of harpoon
heads of different shapes and sizes, depending upon the immediate game
available. The harpoon heads were very similar to those found in the Bering
Strait area, suggesting a direct connection. (Please also see adjacent
modules).

By this time the Norsemen on the southwest coast of Greenland had
founded some 280 farms, 2 Episcopal residences, some monasteries and 17
churches, maintaining contacts with Iceland by open boats and being taxed
by the Vatican in Rome. It is of interest that the route from Norway or Great
Britain, via the Shetlands, Faeroes, Iceland, Greenland and Baffin Island to
Labrador and continental America has no ocean gap wider than the length
of Lake Michigan. (Ref. 189, 95) In 1362 the Norwegian king, Magnus
Ericson, sent an expedition west to look for some of his people of a
previous voyage who had failed to reach their Greenland destination. It is
possible that the would-be rescuers entered what would later be Hudson's
Bay[footnote].

This statement is taken from Trager (Ref. 222), but as with all of his items,
no reference is made as to the source of the information

Regarding the Canadian Indians, please see previous modules.

THE UNITED STATES

There is an ancient church at Newport, Rhode Island, which Professor Fell
(Ref. 66) says was built in this 14th century by Norsemen. He quotes the
writings of an Italian explorer, Giovanni de Verrazana, who sailed in 1524
northward from Florida to Labrador to the effect that while sailing along the
Narragansett coast he was astonished to see a tall, stone-built "Norman
villa". On going ashore he found friendly, civilized Indians, some with fair
skins, but they could remember nothing of how the stone structure had been
built. This "Norma villa" was undoubtedly the Round Tower of Newport, in
which some claim that Norse runes have been inscribed. Others deny
entirely the antiquity of this building.

There is little accurate history of the North American Indians at this time
but probably the tribal differentiation had about reached the point which
was to be glimpsed by the Europeans in the last of the next century. Recent
excavations at the ancient village of Crow Creek in South Dakota have
revealed some 500 skeletons of men, women and children of the Coalescent
Culture, apparently massacred by other Indians. The lack of females in the
12 to 19 year old bracket and the absence of very young children probably
indicates that this group was taken captive. The skeletons showed evidence
of multiple diseases and injuries, with a total of some 1137 incidents of
abnormality identified. Bone cancer was virtually non-existent and arthritis
was rare, but the bones did show evidence of infection, vitamin and protein
deficiencies. No one knows why this massacre occurred among these
usually placid, farmer peoples nor why their culture seemed to disappear
entirely about A.D. 1400. Perhaps occasional or chronic malnutrition was a
factor; perhaps the Missouri flood plain and terraces became over-
populated; or perhaps an extended drought could have tipped the balance.
(Ref. 79)

Recent research regarding a Mississippian Culture group called the "Dallas
Society" of eastern Tennessee and northwestern Georgia has yielded much
information about the life-styles of southeastern Indians of this and the next
century. Three types of villages have been found, the largest probably
originally containing 1,000 or more people, were located at key locations in
the Tennessee River drainage and had multiple earthen mounds,
fortifications and wattle-and-daub single room houses. The flat-topped
earthen mounds served as substructures for civic or religious buildings.

Intermediate-sized villages and small hamlets were located near fertile
alluvial soils necessary for cultivation of corn, beans, squash and
sunflowers. This agricultural diet was supplemented by deer and fish and
wild plant foods, chiefly various nuts. (Ref. 284)

Excavations on Key Marco on the Gulf coast of Florida indicate that
Indians living there between A.D. 1000 and 1500 lived in thatch houses
built on stilts and used spear-throwers and swords armed with sharks’ teeth.
They lived by hunting, fishing and gathering of shell-fish. They had some
elaborate, wooden sculptures, which included animals, heads of deer, birds,
etc. along with rush and bark matting, basketry and untempered pottery.
(Ref. 45)

In the southwest United States, the Hohokam people built their most
enduring monument, the four-story Casa Grande on the Gila River, about
A.D. 1350. This was probably an elite residence, perhaps a storehouse and
observatory. There were observation holes which could be used to identify
the summer and winter solstices. It seems likely that their society had
become very stratified, with high chiefs and lowly peasants. (Ref. 269) The
transplanted Anasazi flourished in their new area in central New Mexico.
By A.D. 1330 Arroyo Hondo Pueblo near Sante Fe had 1,500 people and
similar pueblos developed all along the Rio Grande. (Ref. 277) Rooms, one
on top of the other up to three stories, were carved into the cliff, and then
other rooms of mud mortar and stone were built in front of these. The roof
beams were supported by sockets carved into the cliff. Rock art and painted
murals were common. An ingenious method of maintaining moisture in the
field involved the spreading of gravel to reduce evaporation. Thousands of
acres were so treated and these fields produce lusher plant growth even
today. Agricultural products were augmented by the raising of turkeys and
trading with eastern tribes brought buffalo meat. (Ref. 277) The original
pueblo people, however, from this time on were pretty well replaced by
descendants of the invading Athapascan-speaking tribes such as the
Apache, San Carlos, Tonto, Mescalero and the Navajo. (Ref. 88, 45, 210)

MEXICO, CENTRAL AMERICA, AND THE CARIBBEAN

In this 14th century the Gulf coast of Mexico was occupied by the Totanac
people while inland, the Aztecs, a branch of the Nuhua, reached the shores
of Lake Texcoco in 1325 and built an impregnable capital in the marshes of
the lake and on an island, within the next ten years. This capital city,
Tenochtitlan, soon had more than 150,000 people and was laid out on a grid
plan covering more than 4.6 miles, much of this being reclaimed swamp
land. Canals reached all parts of the city and five causeways linked it to the
main- land. This area is now a part of Mexico City. Of incidental interest is
the fact that these Indians raised a special hairless breed of dog, a larger
ancestor of the Chihuahua, for food.

The Aztec medical profession had an hereditary character and healers were
divided into specialties, such as the "tictl", who used magic and some
anatomical knowledge and the properties of plants and minerals. Others
were teeth pullers, bone setters, etc. At Mayapan in the Yucatan there was
somewhat of a Maya renaissance, founded by colonists from Chichen Itza.
(Ref. 138, 125, 45)

Up to this time in this outline, we have had little or nothing to say about the
Caribbean, when discussing Middle America. This is not to say that there
were no people living on those islands, but simply that specific information
has been meagre. It has been established, however, that Taino Indians, with
ancestors in South America, were now spreading from Haiti out over Cuba,
Jamaica and the Bahamas. These Arawak-speaking people pushed back or
enslaved a more primitive tribe, the Siboney. They grew corn and yams,
made cassava bread from yucca, spun and wove cotton and made
omamented, fine, brown pottery. Artificial flattening of infants' heads
produced low foreheads in the adults. They used honey for sweetening and
smoked cigars through their noses. The more southern islands, including
Porto Rico, were inhabited by the cannibalistic Caribs. (Ref. 213)

SOUTH AMERICA

The Cuculis and Puerto Viejos, who lived along the lowlands of coastal
Peru in this and the next century, used an ancient technique of digging wells
that slowly filled over a 24 hour period, so that at the end of each day, a

small sluice could be opened to let water into a network of canals leading
into a man's garden. People of a hundred villages lived in this way in an
area where today one cannot even find a lizard. Although the pottery of
these people was poor, they had rich fabrics and some metal devices,
including beam scales. Two Puerto Viejo villages have been unearthed, one
at the southern tip of Chica, where the mountains enter the ocean and cut
off the beach. The inhabitants had returned to the use of part underground
houses, not previously used in this region for 3,000 years, although such
structures had been found among the Diaguites on the Argentine slopes of
the Andes. The Puerto Viejo built temples and palaces, too. One of these
had a base of some 3,600 square yards and was built on a cliff. Some 3,000
acres of land were used for agriculture, chiefly for corn. (Ref. 62)

Legends state that the Incas already had a flourishing capital at Cuzco in
this century, but certainly it could not compare with the great urban site of
Chan Chan, capital of the Chimu Empire existing on the desert north coast,
in this and adjacent centuries. No one knows exactly when Chan Chan was
built on the threshold of the modern city of Trujillo. The Chimus dominated
some 12 coastal valleys and a territory of some 125,000 arable acres. They
apparently did not impose their rule beyond the boundaries of the Sechura
Desert in the north. The use of supplementary and more stable water
resources may have been the factor that favored the setting up of this
kingdom, as the area is actually an oasis, extended by irrigation canals.
Early Chimu art depicted many bird-men with long, hooked beaks. As on
Easter Island, these men were frequently depicted navigating reed vessels.
Except that the Chimu were urban dwellers with highly organized military
and social systems, little was reported about them until very recently. A
possible clue as to the origin of these people is in the report of Father
Miguel Cabello de Balboa who interviewed Peruvians in the 16th century.
The natives said that in "ancient times" a large group of families left the
place of the Mochicas with a great fleet of "Balsas" (rafts) and sailed north
to establish the Chimu Dynasty and culture. (Ref. 62, 88, 95)

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America: A.D. 1401 to 1500

AMERICA

Back to America: A.D. 1301 to 1400

NORTH AMERICA

CANADA AND THE FAR NORTH

The last recorded voyage from Iceland to Greenland was in 1410. The
worsening climate had reduced productivity of Greenland livestock and
there was increasing navigational hazards from drift ice. Nevertheless, in
1432 a treaty had been reached between the Norwegian and English kings
in an effort to stop English pirates from roving the Davis Strait and a papal
letter of 1448 condemned these English pirates. All Greenland settlements
were apparently abandoned by about 1500.

In the arctic there were Thule Eskimos and Aleuts and in the subarctic
regions there were many Indian tribes, including Kutchin, Kaska,
Chipewyan and Cree. There seems no doubt that the Thule people,
previously described as inhabiting northern Canada and Greenland from at
least A.D. 1000 onward, were the direct ancestors of todays Polar Eskimos,
who live on Greenland's northwest coast. The Thule, like the Dorset before
them, were artists of ivory carving, both for implements and decorative
pendants. Although they apparently originally had pottery when they lived
primarily in Alaska, their northeastern Canadian areas had a scarcity of clay
and firewood, so they carved vessels out of soapstone for seal-blubber
lamps, over which they boiled their meat or fish. At the end of this century
large scale fishing enterprises began on the Newfoundland banks, where the
warm waters of the Gulf Stream meet the colder arctic currents and the cod
survive in amazing numbers. Basques, French, Dutch and English all
scuffled for dominance, with the Spanish Basques finally being driven out.
(Ref. 260) In 1497 Giovanni Cabato, a Genoese sailing under the British

Union Jack and the anglicized name of John Cabot re-discovered
Newfoundland and Nova Scotia for England. Three years later Corte-Real
of Portugal explored the coast of Labrador. (Ref. 222) On the Canadian
Pacific coast there were the Tlingit tribes and on the Great Plains were
Blackfoot, Ojibwa, Ottawa, Huron and Micmac. The United States Apache
are related to the Canadian Athapascan tribes, some of whom migrated to
reach the southwest (Arizona) in this 15th century. By the 1490s there were
about 200,000 Indians spread over much of Canada. (Ref. 8, 189, 93)

THE UNITED STATES

To supplement the remarks made in the paragraph above, in North America
as a whole there were, in this century, about 1,000,000 Indians, with about
500 different languages. In northeastern United States there were
Pottowatomie, Susquehannock, Iroquois, Erie, Miami, Illinois and
Shawnee. In the southeast were Chickasaw, Cherokee, Creek, Chocktaw,
Natchez and others. In the far west were the Nes Perce, the California tribes
of Pima, Yokuts, Chumash, Cochimi and then inland the Shoshone, Utes,
Apache and in the central plains the Sioux, Cheyenne, Kiowa, Wichita,
Comanche and many others. (Ref. 206, 8)

Regarding the Indians of the Great Plains, the Huff archeological site, some
20 miles south of Bismarck, N.D., shows a remarkable village built by the
ancestors of the Mandan tribe and occupied from 1400 to 1600. House
lodges still number more than 100 and the Missouri River has been cutting
away an untold number by eroding the bluff on which the houses rest.
These structures averaged 38 feet by 30 feet, supported by central posts.
The walls were of wattle and daubb and the roofs perhaps of sod. There is
evidence of both horticulture and bison hunting. (Ref. 88)

The Mississippian Culture, which has been discussed in previous chapters,
reached its climax about A.D. 1500, with the unique southern cult which
included pyramids grouped around a central square or plaza with a wood,
wattle and daub and thatch temple on its summit. These had a strong
suggestion of influence from Mesoamerica. One of the most notable temple
sites was Cahokia, at St. Louis, where groupings of pyramids and burial

mounds cover several square miles. The largest is 104 feet high and covers
16 acres.

Bizarre articles of copper, shell, stone, wood and clay in some mounds in
the south show a preoccupation with violence and death. Apparently
southern Indians had kept captive slaves for centuries. For example: when
the Whites arrived in the next century, the Lower Creeks had Yamasee
slaves. The standard beverage in Mississippian times was the "black drink",
usually made from parched leaves of the yaupon, a type of holly. (Ref. 88,
267)

In the southwest something happened to the Hohokams about A.D. 1450
and their climb toward civilization rather abruptly ceased and their society
collapsed, cause unknown. Their descendants are probably the unassuming
Pima, living in modest pithouse villages, much like their ancestors did a
thousand years before. (Ref. 269) Pueblo Indians remained scattered across
the southwest, but chiefly in the Albuquerque, Sante Fe, Taos area. Kiva
walls in the great 1,000 room complex at Kuaua, north of Albuquerque, had
85 coats of plaster, with paintings of spirit dancers invoking rain and other
blessings. (Ref. 277)

Designs similar to, but smaller than the famous giant, ground drawings near
Nazca, Peru, have been found near Blythe, California overlooking the
Colorado River. These are judged to date to this 15th century, are of human
and animal forms and have been extensively photographed by archeologist
Jay von Werlhof and photographer Harry Casey over a several year period.
One 75 foot tall, human effigy resembles the broad-shouldered figures of
Navaho sand paintings. Another human caricature is 170 feet high and may
represent Ha-ak, a mythical creature, who ate children. (Ref. 290)

MEXICO, CENTRAL AMERICA, AND THE CARIBBEAN

A number of city-states had arisen as heirs of the Mexican Toltec priest-
state, including the Totonac, Mixtec, Zapotec, Maya and then the Circun-
Caribbean groups. One of these, Tenochtitlan, along with two lessor cities
gained military predominance and held a loose power over most of central

Mexico. After A.D. 1431, under the chieftains Itzcoatl and Moctzuma I, the
Aztecs of Tenochtitlan mastered the other tribes of the valley and then
crossed the mountains and dominated southern Mexico, as well. These
Aztecs attained a high degree of development in engineering, architecture,
art, mathematics and astronomy, whether through their own endeavors
completely or through adoption of culture from pre-existing societies.
Picture writing, rapidly approaching phonetics, was developed and
agriculture, gold and silver workings, pottery and textiles were advanced.
Moctezuma I and Nezahualcoyotl, king of Texcoco, an allied city-state,
built a 9 mile long dam in Lake Texcoco, to separate salt water from fresh.
Aztec aquaculture harvested spirolina, a high protein algae, carried as
rations by warriors. It is still exported to Japan as a condiment, in the
amount of 700 tons a year. The Aztec language was Nahuatl and 1,200,000
Mexicans still speak it today. Such world words as "chocolate", "tomato",
"tamale" and "chili" have come directly from this source. (Ref. 138)

It is well known that the Aztecs used human sacrifices as a part of their
religious activities, in the form of ceremonial cannibalism. Tenochtitlan
priests ripped open chests of living victims with flint knives, tore out still
beating hearts and ate them. The heads were hung on racks (perhaps the
brains were eaten also) and the remainders of the bodies were tumbled
down the steep-sided temple steps for the populace to eat. At times one
thigh was given to the Supreme Council and other choice cuts to other
nobles and then the remainders given to the victim's captor, who took it
home and had it cooked into a maize and man stew, to be eaten by all the
family. (Ref. 211) A subsidiary nation, Tlaxcalan, may have been preserved
simply as a "stockyard" to supply human meat for Aztec raiders[footnote].
One possible explanation for the cannibalism, according to Michail
Harner[footnote], is that human flesh was the only source of some essential
amino-acids needed by man. He explains that there were few or no
domesticable herbivores in pre-Columbian Mexico and the poor could
neither import game nor get the needed combinations of amino acids in
their limited diets, so that cannibalism became their salvation. This is not
accepted by the majority of Aztec specialists. (Ref. 273) Some have
estimated that 250,000 people were sacrificed each year (Ref. 129),
although other authorities say that on the eve of the Spanish conquest, there
were only about 50,000 human victims a year. (Ref. 8) Still another

estimate has been given by Bart McDowell (Ref. 138), who wrote that after
the great Tenochtitlan was dedicated in 1487 between 10,600 and 70,400,
depending on the source, were sacrificed with the ritual killings continuing
without pause from sun-up to sun-down, four at a time, for four days. At
least on some occasions, once captives were killed their bodies were flayed
and the skin worn by priests for 20 days. Multiple pictures drawn by Aztec
artists, under Spanish supervision, show these skin enrobed priests. (Ref.
273)

Anawalt (Ref. 273) says there is no proof of this concept. The vassal
provinces did pay tribute, but probably not in humans for sacrifice.

As noted by James K. Page, Jr. in "Smithsonian" 8: 24-28, June, 1977. He
referred to Harner's remarks in "Natural History", Vol. 86, No. 4.

Mexican writers tend to indicate that the cannibalism was entirely a
religious rite, re-enacting a mythical battle between the God Huitzilopochtli
and his sorceress sister, Coyalxauhqui, whom he dismembered. (Ref. 148)
Anawalt (Ref. 273) writes that as children of the sun the Aztecs felt a heavy
responsibility to keep the sun (representing Hiutzilopochtli in his daily
battle) strong, by giving it the most sacred of all foods - human blood. The
most common blood offerings were from auto-sacrifice from every man,
woman and child, from ear lobes, tongues, extremities, chest or genitals.
Human sacrifice, however, was the most holy rite and took place on one or
more days of each of the 18 months in the Aztec year. Most of these were
captives or specially selected and prepared individuals.

The Aztecs did not have the wheel, but they had an intensive agriculture
and probably some 12,000,000 peasants were expected to grow a surplus of
some 20,000 tons of food for the city and its trading network. They had
inherited techniques for quarrying and moving large blocks of stone, as
manifested in their so-called calendar stone, a basalt disk 3.6 meters in
diameter, 72 centimeters thick and weighing 24 metric tons. It was quarried
with stone hammers and chisels, with wooden wedges inserted into
cleavage planes. (Ref. 8, 149)

On the Goodman-Martinez-Thompson correlation dating system used by
the National Geographic Society, the Aztecs did not turn on their previous
superiors, the Tepehecs, until 1428 and then by 1519 had a tribute empire

that covered most of central Mexico and stretched as far as Guatemala. The
other dating correlation system is the "Spinden", which makes all Central
American dates about 260 years earlier. The problem is not with relative
dates in the American scene, which are consistent by the old Mayan
calendars, but with relating these to the Christian calendar. A discovery in
Vera Cruz in 1972 seems to confirm the former method to be the most
accurate. A map will be found under this same section in the next chapter,
showing the progression of the Aztec state and its relationship to other
Central and South American empires.

The exact population of Mexico before the arrival of the Spaniards is, of
course, unknown. Some have given well thought-out estimates as high as
25,000,000. But, as Braudel (Ref. 260) has pointed out, the Indian
population of this 15th century suffered a demographic weakness because
of the absence of substitute animal milk, a feature which necessitated breast
feeding for 3 or 4 years, thus reducing the fertility. This was a factor in the
failure of rapid revival of the Indian population after the devastating
onslaught of the diseases and firearms of the Spaniards. Outside the Aztec
area, Yucatan and the Mayan area of Guatemala were politically divided
between petty, rival states. Yucatan continued to remain separate from
Mexico until the time of the Mexican revolution.

No reader needs to be reminded that Christopher Columbus reached the
Caribbean in 1492, claiming territory for his backer, the Spanish monarchy.
All may not know, however, that he had previously sailed far down the
coast of Africa and to Iceland and beyond in the north Atlantic, in earlier
days. He certainly knew of the presence of Greenland and contrary to some
reports, there never was any question about the earth being flat among the
sailors of that time. The navigation problem originated, at least in part, from
the fact that scientists of the day had accepted Marco Polo's location of
Japan as being 1,500 miles off the China coast. This, added to Columbus'
adoption of a markedly wrong diameter of the earth, resulted in his
assurances throughout his western voyages that he had reached the Indies
and was very near China and Japan. On each of his western trips, Columbus
rode the Canary Current and the prevailing Atlantic trade-winds. (Ref. 260)
On the first, he required 36 days from the Canary Islands to his Caribbean
landfall. It is of interest that Curtis and Kathleen Saville made essentially

the same trip in a rowboat in 1981 in 50 days. The return trip to Europe,
however, cannot be made without going first north with the Gulf Stream, or
with power. (Ref. 150, 188)

Columbus' misconception regarding the land he found is worth a little more
detail. There are 360 degrees of longitude in the circumference of the earth
and we know today that each degree is very close to 60 nautical miles, thus
making the perimeter of the globe some 21,600 nautical miles. Erothenes,
many centuries before Columbus, had estimated a degree of longitude at
59.5 miles, but Columbus accepted the calculations of a Moslem
geographer, Alfragan, who postulated this figure at 56.667 Arabic miles.
Columbus further misinterpreted this as the equivalent of 45 western,
nautical miles thus making an error of 25%. This, plus his erroneous
placement of Japan from the writings of Marco Polo, resulted in great
confusion. The Canary Islands are on the same latitude as the southern tip
of Japan and that was his reason for leaving from that point. He was
unaware, apparently, that it was the Canary Current at that latitude that
really allowed him to make the crossing. The true air-line miles from the
Canaries to Japan number about 10,600, but Columbus' calculations were
that it should be only 2,400. (Ref. 150)

At any rate, the Genoese Columbus, whose Spanish name was Don
Cristobal Colon, took off on his first cross-Atlantic voyage with the famous
Nina, Pinta and Santa Maria vessels, leaving Spain for the Canaries on
August 3, 1492. Rough water had made him take 6 days between Spain and
those islands, where the warlike Guanches were only partially conquered
but were gradually being reduced to slavery. We know something about his
ships. The Nina, about 60 tons[footnote] probably had a 6 feet draught, an
overall length of 70 feet, a 23 feet beam and a hold depth amidships of
about 9 feet. It was square rigged with a lanteen sail on the mizzen and was
provisioned for a year. For the seamen, the chief foods were wine, olive oil
and bread in the form of sea biscuits or hard tack. They had some fish,
salted meat, legumes and garlic. They sailed by dead reckoning, which
means estimating the speed of the ship and then calculating the-distance
travelled. Columbus repeatedly tried some celestial navigation but he made
bad errors and actually relied almost completely on dead reckoning, at
which we was apparently a master. One could not really tell longitude at

that time, because there was no reliable maritime clock. The compass was
the only fairly dependable instrument and even its variations from the pole
star tended to be confusing. Nevertheless, the first crossing was not
difficult, running on the trade winds and with the Canary Current, with the
best day's run being 174 nautical miles. Columbus landed on the island of
San Salvador in the Bahamas. (Ref. 150)

In this instance the word "ton" as applied to the size of a ship has been
taken from the Castilian tonelada and the Portuguese tonel, meaning a tun
of wine, which is a large cask equivalent in volume to 2 pipes (hogsheads)
or roughly equal to 40 cubic feet. This later became a unit of capacity for
English vessels and has nothing to do with weight. (Ref. 150).

The adventurers immediately encountered Taino Indians, speakers of what
was later to be identified as an Arawak language. They used dugout boats,
some carrying 40 to 45 men and they used hammocks for sleeping, a trick
soon adopted by the Spanish seamen. Deeper on the island many of the
Taino were kept captive for eating purposes by the cannibalistic Caribs.
Taino boys were castrated and the girls were kept to raise babies, which the
Caribs thought to be particularly tasty. (Ref. 150) The Indians went
essentially naked, wearing a few trinkets of gold leaf. The latter, of course,
greatly excited the Europeans and they sailed through the Bahamas to
Hispaniola (Haiti) in pursuit of gold, as well as Japan and the Grand Khan
of China. They decided Cuba was the Asiatic mainland and it was there that
the Santa Maria went aground. By this time friction had developed among
the ships' captains and Columbus and the skipper of the Pinta sailed her
away, leaving Columbus with the Nina and the grounded Santa Maria. A
fort was built on Cape Haitian Harbor and 39 men were left there while the
Admiral and the Nina sailed on January 16, 1493 for Spain, going first
north and then east. Again Columbus' attempts at celestial navigation were
somewhat ludicrous, but with luck and dead reckoning he hit the Azores
and finally, after some trouble with the Portuguese there, he went on to
Lisbon in a storm. All thought that they had found Asiatic islands. (Ref.
150, 222)

The follow-up to the discovery voyage of Columbus is not so well known.
Queen Isabella sent him back to the Indies in September of 1493, with
1,500 men in a fleet of 17 ships, with the declared prime object of

conversion of the Indians to Christianity and a second object of establishing
a trading colony, with Columbus as governor. The ships sailed through the
smaller leeward islands to Porto Rico and finally to Haiti, where it was
found that the men left there on the previous voyage were dead. The first
battle with Indians took place on St. Croix Island on November 13th.
Columbus was able to take some of these vicious, cannibalistic Caribs as
prisoners and made them slaves. Then he explored southern Cuba, which he
thought was part of China, and/or islands of Malay and then he went on to
Jamaica. On this voyage he established another colony on Haiti, but his
men, who had no women on their ships from Spain, raped, robbed and
enslaved the Indians. Fray Buil, who had been sent as the Christian priest,
participated in the Indian enslavement and Columbus, himself, eventually
returned with some 500 Indians for the slave markets of Seville, when he
got home again in the spring of 1496. Colonists who were left in the
Caribbean built the city of Santo Domingo in 1496 or 1497, as the first
American urban community. (Ref. 150, 222) It has been estimated that the
total population of Hispaniola (Haiti) in 1496 was 4,000,000, chiefly
Indians, of course. (Ref. 267)

Since the Spanish royalty was not too happy with the paucity of gold and
silver brought back from the New World after 2 trips, Columbus had real
difficulty in arranging his third. Finally in 1498 he sailed again, to land in
Trinidad and Venezuela on the South American coast. Another fleet
supposedly went directly to provision the colony on Santa Domingo. In
Venezuela the men did find guanin or tumbaga, an alloy of gold, silver and
copper, with the amount of gold varying from 9 to 89% and the copper from
11 to 74%. They also found more cannibalistic Caribs and big fighting-
canoes, with cabins amidships, which may have been factors in making the
Spaniards just miss an area of great pearl fisheries. Returning to Santo
Domingo, Columbus found 160 of the European colony (20 to 30% of the
total) ill with syphilis. The natives had been shamefully exploited, the
provision fleet hadn't arrived and some mutineers had been hanged.
Francisco de Bobadilla, who had been sent to the island by the Spanish
monarchs as Chief Justice, blamed Columbus for the various problems,
arrested him and had him returned to Spain in chains. The year was 1500.

This section would not be complete without further comment concerning
the much debated question of the origin of syphilis. Morison (Ref. 150)
states that there is abundant evidence of syphilis occurring in a mild,
endemic form in the pre-Columbian American Indians, but it was not until
after the arrival of Columbus' sailors that the disease became rampant on
both continents. For whatever reason, the interaction of the European men
and the Indians made the disease violent on both sides of the Atlantic.

SOUTH AMERICA (See map in the next module)

NORTHERN AND WESTERN SOUTH AMERICA

There were many different Indian peoples in this part of South America. Of
the Andean groups the great Inca Empire was dominant, but there were also
the northern Caribs, Caraja, Mundurcu and the Savana-Orinoco group,
among others. Sometime in the era just before the dominance of the Incas,
the Chimu kingdom deteriorated markedly, perhaps because their farmland
had been over-irrigated and insufficiently drained and had become
salinized. The lowlands of coastal Peru were, and are, saturated with salt
and to be useful the land must be excellently drained and well flushed.
Deforestation also resulted in a dessication so that the underground rivers,
so important for the low lying savannahs, began to disappear. Today the
ruins of Chan cover an area of 14 square miles, with 10 surviving walled
compounds (fortresses) forming the heart of the city.

The Peruvian Incas subdued the coastal Chimu civilization early in the
century, although as we have seen, it may already have been in decline. It
was in the reigns of the 8th emperor, Viracocha, and his son Pachuciti and
grandson Topa that the Incas expanded out of their original Cuzco region
and soon had an empire 200 by 2,000 miles in area with a population of
perhaps 10,000,000. Engel (Ref. 62) writes that only when Prince Pachacuti
mounted the throne in A.D. 1438, does tradition become reliable and
concomitant with provable fact. Everything prior to that is summed up in a
bunch of names that may have very little true value. It is probable that in

the time of Viracocha, the so-called empire was still restricted to the narrow
Cuzco Valley, in an area of a few thousand acres, surrounded by hostile
neighbors. The sudden blossoming and conquering of territory then matches
that of Alexander the Great or of the great, ancient Persian kings. The word
"Inca" does not imply a race; it belongs only to a dynasty and the system
that dynasty imposed on a number of South American peoples. The entire
imperial expansion lasted only 100 years, but due to the deportation of
conquered peoples and the planting of garrisons, the Incas made their
Quechua language into the "lingua franca" of the Andes and it remains so
today, even 4 centuries after the competing Spanish language appeared.
(Ref. 62, 221)

There have been millions of words written about the Inca civilization. In
this outline we can only hope to summarize some of the more important and
interesting features. Inca governors subdivided the entire population into
groups of 10 persons[footnote] and were thus able to control activities of
every farmer and craftsman. All the people lived in small villages, but there
was a system of post and military roads and coastal navigation was well
advanced. Agriculture was extensive, with a complex pattern of irrigation
and terracing. Art, architecture and metal working were all well developed.
They had a calendar and advanced surgical techniques. The famous royal
highway of the Incas incorporated the earlier Moche roads into a 6,000 mile
network, one road connecting Quito in the north to Cuzco in the center and
eventually down to the Maule River in Chile. Another coast road ran
absolutely straight for miles on end. These roads averaged 20 feet in width,
were of ten paved with stone or cut through rock and many deep chasms
were bridged. Nothing in Europe compared to these roads from the time of
the Romans until the era of Napoleon. (Ref. 8, 10)

This is reminiscent of the organization of the Mongol armies.

The Incas had a number of effective plant medications, including quinine
from cinchona bark for malaria, coca, containing cocaine for both
tranquilizing and stimulation, as well as atropine, ipecacuana, curare,
theophyllin and various mind-altering plants such as peyotl, teonancatl and
ololiuqu. Surgery was usually a separate profession. Skulls were trepanned,
but whether this was for medicinal, religious or other reasons is not known.
(Ref. 125)

Inca-style jars, with black on cream decorations and lines forming grids are
called aryballoses and are identical with some in a French museum made by
north African Berbers. There appears to have been no local precursor to
Inca pottery. Even at Cuzco, shards of Inca pottery lie above fragments of
an entirely different, un-related style. No pottery earlier than the Incas has
been found either in Machu Picchu, Ollantaytambo or in Chinchero, where
there were most imposing complexes. In other places, deep to the layers of
Inca pottery, one finds the Killki type, which Engel (Ref. 62) states to be in
no way related to the Incas’. To quote Engel directly concerning the Killki:

"The 'keros' or hardwood flaring vessels with flat bottoms and polychrome
decorations, are supposedly associated with Inca times. There is an
astonishing collection of them, and it is really regrettable- that almost
nothing has been published regarding these archaeological treasures. The
shape of the keros is clearly Tiahuanacoid, however, and the many-colored
decorations ornamenting them indicate that many of them, if not all, belong
to the period of protohistorical transition. Flowers, European costumes, or
African faces are depicted on them. I do not think these keros constitute an
element very typical of the final pre-Columbian period."| footnote |

This quotation is from Engel (Ref. 62), pages 206 and 207. The underlining
is mine. All of this brings up the mysterious possibility of pre-Columbian
European visits, again.

A further confusing fact is that the Inca construction technique of using
enormous polyhedral blocks without mortar appeared abruptly in this 15th
century and the only comparable architecture is in far away Polynesia in the
Marquesas Islands. One of the Inca cities, Ollantaytambo, has an adjacent
terrace rising 300 feet high, with stairways too steep for horses to climb. On
a crest above are enormous carved, monolithic slabs weighing over 100
tons each and there is no way of knowing whether these were raised there
under the direction of the Tiahuanacos or the Incas. Their size and the
difficulty of emplacement rivals both Stonehenge and the temples of Egypt.
(Ref. 62) By 1471 the Incas had pushed south into Chile and northern
Argentina, while after 1493 the new emperor Huayna Capac concentrated
on the north, founding Quito in modern Ecuador as a northern capital. His
sons, however, fought bitter civil war, dividing the northern and southern
parts of the empire.

Along the western frontier of what is now Argentina, lived the Chiriguanos,
a Guaranis tribe with Caribbean customs, who had settled in the lower
Andes in pretohistoric times. Finally they conquered all the lower Andes
from the Bermejo River to Santa Cruz in the north. It is known historically
that several tens of thousands of them made trips of over 600 miles and
were a permanent menace to cities like Cuzco and Machu Picchu because
of their penchant for the women, salt, wool and metal objects of those
centers. Other tribes dotted the whole northern and western South American
areas - the peaceable Arawaks, the Chiquitos, who used curare-poisoned
arrows, the Mojos, the Yuracares, the Mosotenes and the Chimanes and
many more in far flung regions where they remain in a primitive state
today. Some paid tribute to the Incas, some fought. (Ref. 62)

Much of the original capital city at Cuzco, on the eastern slope of the
Peruvian Andes at just over 11,000 feet altitude, has been excavated,
including the famed Inca Shrine and the Temple of the Sun, the walls of
which were faced with gold plates. The Inca rulers were absolute despots,
taking 2/3 of each conquered peasant's harvest. In the south both Pachacuti
and Topa Yupanqui had difficult campaigns to subdue the Collaos, which
although desolate now, must have been one of the most densely populated
areas of the Andes at that time. This opened the way to the eastern slopes
and to Bolivia and from there Topa subdued the Diaguites of Chile, down to
the edge of Araucanian territory. The area of Collaos had huge stone
storehouses and silos, each capable of containing tons of grain. By the end
of the century the empire covered 37 degrees of latitude. (Ref. 10, 62)

EASTERN AND CENTRAL SOUTH AMERICA

There were as many and varied peoples in eastern South America as in the
Andes. There were various forest groups and in the south the Puelche,
Charrua and the Mataco stone-age people. No one knows for certain the
date of arrival or the origin of the aborigines of Brazil, but many recognize
what appears to be a common cradle in southeast Asia. The tropical Malays
and the jungle Brazilians have a striking physical analogy and many
common cultural elements, such as the poisonous blow pipe. Such jungle
equipment could certainly not have survived the barren arctic tundra and

very possibly indicates an involuntary passage along the Urdaneta
(Japanese) Current and down the American coast, or even more reasonable,
although unprovable, a migration of Malaysians across the Indian Ocean
west to Madagascar, then to the tip of South Africa and then, riding the
southern Atlantic current, to Brazil. (Ref. 95) Most of the eastern South
American Indians, particularly those of Brazil, were cannibals, with the
dominant tribes often fattening their victims like cattle before the kill. The
victims' lard was collected in buckets and a portion of the meat was smoked
and hung, as fish or other animal flesh is preserved.

Enemies appear to have been barbecued. In Tannahill's book Food in
History (Ref. 211) on page 266 there is a gruesome picture depicting this,
with the title, "Comment les sauvages rotissent leurs ennemis."| footnote]
The picture shows an arm on a barbecue frame over a fire, a human body on
the floor with the head just chopped off and another person apparently in
the act of eviscerating this victim. Some children have a man's head and
two men seem to be holding a human thigh in the background. At home
these warrior-farmers lived in the nude, their bodies painted. Their houses
had thatched roofs made of laths from long bamboos cut with a stone axe.
They used bows, harpoons and boats. Manioc and corn were grown in
clearings made by burning trees and they of ten had to move to be near
fresh water.

Tannahill reports that the picture was taken originally from I a
Cosmographie Universelle, Vol. 2, Paris, 1,575.

The name "Brazil" was taken from the brazilwood trees found there. It
seems probable that Portuguese fishermen knew of the existence, not only
of the Azores, but also the coast of Brazil long before the time of Columbus
and certain customs in both Brazilian and Argentinian Indians are
compatible with an African connection, also. (Ref. 62) In 1500, the same
year in which Columbus was taken back to Spain in chains from his third
trip to the Caribbean, the Portuguese Admiral Pedro Alvares Cabral landed
in Brazil.

Actually he had been headed for India via Cape of Good Hope from the
Cape Verde Islands, with 13 caravels, when contrary winds had driven him

westward. He took possession of Brazil in the name of Manoel I, of
Portugal. (Ref. 222)

Forward to America: A.D. 1501 to 1600
Choose Different Region

Intro to Era

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The Near East

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ONDUARWNPE

America: A.D. 1501 to 1600

AMERICA

Back to to America: A.D. 1401 to 1500

NORTH AMERICA

THE FAR NORTH AND CANADA

It was mentioned earlier in this chapter that this century has been called the
"Little Ice Age" because of an overall drop in temperature. Although the
Thule Arctic Culture was probably little affected, the arctic glacier now
extended well down on Greenland, destroying the agricultural base there,
which had helped to support neighboring Iceland. (Ref. 224)

Only 12 years after Columbus' first voyage to America, Breton fishermen
were working the cod banks off Nova Scotia and soon were on the
mainland, trading with the Indians for furs. Gaspar Corte-Real had
discovered Newfoundland for Portugal and the French explorers Verrazano
and Cartier initiated the "French Kingdoms of the North" to give needed
revenues for the luxuries of the court of young Francois I. Giovanni de
Verrazano (actually a Genoese) sailed all up the coast from Chesapeake Bay
to the Strait of Belle Isle. Jacques Cartier followed in 1534, named the St.
Lawrence River and then tried for a sea route to Asia, finding only auks,
cod, herring, wolf fish, wapiti, elks, beaver and even a polar bear. Scurvy
became rampant among his Frenchmen and the Hurons with whom they
dealt. After that period for 50 years there were only trappers and traders,
with trading posts at Quebec and Montreal. The name "Canada" is an Indian
word meaning "village". (Ref. 39, 122, 150, 222)

THE UNITED STATES (See map on page 1009)

By 1600 there were probably 1,000,000 Indians, speaking some 2,000
languages, in the United States. (Ref. 8) New York state and the lower
Great Lakes region were the lands of the Iroquois. Their village sites were
built away from waterways and were sometimes fortified. They farmed
maize and possibly beans and squash and hunted. Pottery was used for
cooking and storing tobacco for their pipes. (Ref. 45) In 1845 settlers near
Onandaga, not far from Lake Ontario, found a stone which was inscribed
"Leo VI 1520" and this may indicate a Norse settlement proscribed by the
then Pope Leo VI, some 14 years before the arrival of Jacques Cartier. (Ref.
[link]) In 1584 Sir Walter Raleigh sent Amandes and Barlow to found a
colony at Raleigh, Virginia, but it was subsequently lost, as were two
following attempts in 1587 and 1589 by John White on Roanoke Island.

The century ended without even a trading post belonging to Britain in the
New World. (Ref. 222)

Although there were the limited French and English efforts just mentioned,
Spain owned America in this 16th century, as far as Europeans were
concerned. After the Caribbean was ravaged by the dregs of Spanish
civilization, as we shall note in the next section, it was the turn of the Gulf
Coast of the United States. A first expedition, led by Ponce de Leon (who
had been on Columbus' second trip), landed in Florida in 1513 claiming that
region for Spain. In the 16th century "Florida" meant the entire area of
present day Florida, Georgia, Virginia, Alabama, Mississippi and possibly
more. Ponce may not have been the first Spaniard in Florida, as one early
writer says that when- Ponce arrived at Charlotte Harbor on the Gulf side, a
Spanish-speaking Indian greeted him. This native, however, may have
escaped from a passing Spanish ship or come from the Antilles on his own.

Archeological and linguistic evidence discloses numerous pre-Columbian
contacts between these two places. In spite of all the stories in children's
histories about Ponce de Leon's trip to "find the fountain of youth", he
really sailed to Florida to capture slaves and find precious metals, if
available. He was authorized to make war on the Lucayhos aborigines, if
necessary. Florida was erroneously regarded as just another island and the
term Lucayos (or Bimini) frequently included Florida. On his first voyage,
Ponce was not very successful, obtaining little more than a handful of

Indians, some of whom he trained as interpreters, but when he returned in
1521 he opened war against the Caluysa and they killed him. (Ref. 267)

There were apparently many shipwrecks of European vessels along the
southern coasts in the 16th century - some say 10,000 - and the
Southeastern Ceremonial Complex of Indians began to use the silver coins
and jewelry for their own pendants, gorgets and beads. All of this means
that the Algonquians, Siouans, Muskhogeans and Iroquoians living by the
ocean knew a great deal about the Europeans before they actually landed. In
1520 Lucas Vasquez de Ayllon commissioned Francisco Gordillo to sail to
the northerly part of La Florida and he did so, going clear up to Chesapeake
Bay, even making a short exploratory inland trip in the vicinity of Pawley's
Island. After some other explorations by subordinates, Ayllon himself set
forth in 1526 with 7 ships, 500 men, 100 women and Negroes, 89 horses
and interpreters to settle in the region of the Cape Fear River or the Santee
River. The enterprise did not prosper as one provision ship wrecked and
sank and Ayllon died after an extended sickness. The remaining people
relocated farther south near the future George- town, Carolina, where most
died of disease, drowning or Indian warfare. A few remnants returned to
Hispaniola. A little later Narvaez landed in the vicinity of Tampa Bay and
detected gold among the natives' possessions. They claimed it had been
obtained in Apalachee, a province in the north. Certainly there was gold in
the Appalachian Mountains, but whether the Indians had mined it in truth or
obtained the gold from shipwrecks or from Mexico, is not known. Narvaez
searched for the source but was unsuccessful. — The only survivors of this
expedition were Cabeza de Vaca, the black Moor slave, Esteban and a few
others. The first two and one other wandered for 8 years across the southern
United States, including Texas, Arizona and New Mexico to the area
inhabited by the Pima Indians, finally reaching Mexico City. (Ref. 39, 267)

Leaving Spain in 1538, Hernando de Soto landed in the vicinity of present
day Tampa Bay in 1539 following Narvaez’ trail with 600 men and more
than 200 horses. He went up the peninsula, wintered in Apalachee, then
struck out northward to Cofitachiqui, west- ward to present day Alabama
and across the Mississippi into Arkansas before finally dying and being
buried in the Mississippi River. On his travels he visited the Queen of the
powerful Coitachiqui Chiefdom, occupying a central position in present day

South Carolina, and was impressed by the numerous houses, large mounds
and the grand wooden mat-covered temple. The queen and her court wore
long pearl necklaces - those in her possession reputedly weighing all
together some thousands of pounds. Her warriors had copper-tipped pikes,
maces, battle axes and perhaps 50,000 bows and quivers. The Cofitachiqui
language is unknown. Supposedly Cofitachique contained at least 500
houses, as did Caxa in Alabama and Ocale in Florida. All was not
sweetness and light, however, as the Spanish say that an army of 10,000
Timucuans contested De Soto's trip through Florida and up to 7,000
warriors assaulted him in Mabila. But de Soto and his Spaniards brought
small-pox, measles, tuberculosis, chicken-pox, scarlet fever, typhus,
influenza, whooping cough and the common cold so that within a few
decades the southeast became markedly depopulated and the economic and
political structure of Mississippian life collapsed permanently. Furthermore,
the Caluyas and the Cofitachiqui may already have been depleted and some
settlements abandoned before De Soto arrived as a result of the migration of
infected survivors from a great 1530 plague in Mexico City. (Ref. 267, 39)
Thus, before proceeding with a further description of the Spanish invasion,
a few more words about the southeastern Indians prior to the advent of
Spanish explorers seems advisable.

All southern Indians were essentially farmers and maize was the staff of
life. Farming techniques had progressed far beyond any primitive slash and
burn type of agriculture. The impression for years has been that the squaws
did most of the work, but this is not correct. These Indians lived chiefly in
towns and had their fields in the countryside. While women may have
attended small garden plots, men did much of the work in the principal
fields, clearing them, girdling large trees with stone axes and knives and
fire, disposing of stumps, breaking the ground with hoes consisting of
wooden handles with stone, conch shells or large animal bones at the ends.
The maize was grown quite scientifically, planted at stated intervals in hills.
As growth occurred, more dirt was piled up around the hill, keeping down
weeds, trapping moisture and ensuring a higher yield. A Timucuan practice
in Florida was to plant one crop of maize in the early spring and another in
the summer on the same ground. It was also possible to grow dent, sweet,
pop and other varieties of corn, which matured at different intervals.
Although secondary in importance, hunting and gathering did occur. Deer

were important, not only for food but for skins, and bears were hunted
particularly for their oil, as well as fur and meat. It is not known whether
maize was brought up from Meso-America overland via Texas or by sea
through the West Indies. (Ref. 267)

It was in the Virginia and Carolina Tidewater area where mixing of the
northern hunting-oriented culture with the southern maize-agrarian
civilization can best be documented. The Algonquians, originally spread
over Canada, were late arrivals in the Tidewater, becoming in part, the
Powhatan Confederacy in Virginia and Pamlico and Machapunga of eastern
North Carolina. A feature conspicuously absent in the Tidewater was the
temple platform mound. Other Algonquians were the Roanoke, Croatoan
and Chowanoc. At the time of white contact there were powerful chiefdoms
which might almost be called empires all over the south and southeast,
including the Cofitachiqui, Powhatan, Natchez and Calyusa. When the
Natchez Sun died, his subjects staged an elaborate funeral which included
immolation of his wives. Nearer the east coast local natives had had
extensive contact with Europeans for generation before Raleigh's Roanoke
fiasco, some from Spanish land contact, such as with Ayllon and otherwise
with ships either wrecked or coming ashore for provisions.

In spite of their early failures, Spain did not give up. Tristan de Luna took
1,500 men, women and black slaves to try 2 settlements, one at Pensacola
and the other at Saint Elena (Port Royal). Lack of supplies, disease, internal
bickering and native hostility again defeated the expectations. St. Augustine
was founded by Menendez with more than 1,000 soldiers, farmers, artisans,
their wives and Negroes in 1565. At first it was really a military base from
which to attack the thousand or so French Huguenots, who had fortified Ft.
Caroline just north on the St. Johns River. After these French were finally
expelled, St. Augustine, with only a mediocre harbor and sandy, relatively
unproductive soil, declined in significance. But from St. Elena, founded in
South Caroline in about 1566 on the site of present day Parris Island Marine
Corps base, soldiers and missionaries trekked into the interior, planting at
least five garrisons in the Carolina back country and on the western side of
the mountains. For 6 years a Father Sebastian Montero lived among the
pagans, teaching them Spanish and the rudiments of Christianity. St. Elena

existed for about 21 years and once had about 400 people in some 60
houses. (Ref. 267, 39)

St. Augustine was burned in 1586 by the English privateer, Sir Francis
Drake and he also made an unsuccessful attempt to destroy Santa Elena. He
then stopped by Roanoke Island and picked up some of Raleigh's distressed
soldiers. The few colonists who remained had either been killed or absorbed
by the Indians, when a relief ship finally arrived in 1590.

The Indians bartered skins and furs with the whites. Chief Powhatan
reportedly had 4,000 deerskins in a single wardrobe. But the whites took
many of the natives captives — Ayllon and DeSoto counting their take in the
hundreds. (Ref. 267)

In the southwest, Texas had been claimed for Spain by Alvarez de Pineda in
1519 and by the 1520s large quantities of horses, cattle and sheep had been
brought into New Mexico. In the area of that state and Arizona, there were
at that time about 40,000 Pueblo Indians. At about the same time that De
Soto landed in Florida, Francisco Vasquez de Coronado had Friar Fray
Marcos start north from Mexico on an exploration of what is now New
Mexico. He used Esteban, the Moor who had wandered previously from
Florida to New Spain, as a guide. Esteban's black color was accepted as a
novelty by the Indians and some even thought he was a god. In the
following year Coronado himself led an expedition searching for the "Seven
Cities of Gold", reaching just south of Sante Fe and then back into the
Texas Panhandle and on to the region of Independence, Kansas and the
Nebraska border. He had 250 horsemen, 70 Spanish soldiers, 1,000 friendly
Mexican Indians, baggage animals, sheep, goats and a train of priests.
Others of the original party went around the north end of the Gulf of
California and followed the Colorado River up to the Grand Canyon. On his
way back to Mexico Coronado viciously attacked the Acoma|footnote]
Indian city about 40 miles west of present day Albuquerque, in spite of the
pope's edict about humane treatment of the Indians, and in 3 days and
nights the Spanish killed 600

Late Anasazi people of the Acoma pueblo. (Ref. 277)

Acomas and imprisoned and enslaved that many more. But Spaniards fell,
too, and Coronado returned with only 1/3 of his original 300 plus white

men. That Acoma pueblo, originally built by Kersan Indians on top of a
rock mesa with edifices 3 stories high, was already ancient and may have
been the oldest inhabited site in the United States. In spite of that bloody
fight, those Acomas were converted to Christianity some 30 years later by a
barefoot and unarmed Franciscan priest, Father Ramirez. (Ref. 39, 198,
215, 165)

Beginning in 1596 Juan de Onate took an expedition from Mexico City to
El Paso and then to Sante Fe and on to Quivera, Kansas and then returned
via California, at the top of the Gulf. This was followed in 1598 by the
arrival in the New Mexico area by 400 Spanish men, women and children
with their 80 wagons and 7,000 head of live stock. Some 3,000 sheep were
included. (Ref. 39, 222) In the far west an Englishman did upstage the
Spaniards, as Sir Francis Drake anchored in 1579 just north of San
Francisco Bay, claiming the land for his queen, calling it Nova Albion
(New England). (Ref. 198)[footnote]

Juan de Cabrillo and Bartolome Ferrelo had previously explored the west
coast to Oregon

MEXICO, CENTRAL AMERICA, AND THE CARIBBEAN

In 1513 Nunez de Balboa crossed the Isthmus of Panama and became the
first known European to view the Pacific Ocean. Although by the end of the
15th century the Aztec Empire had passed its zenith, in 1519 there were still
60,000 households in Tenochtitlan and the population of the empire has
been estimated to have been about 5,000,000 with 25,000,000 to
30,000,000 overall in Mexico. Both Mexico and Peru (as we shall see later)
were very densely settled. The two American foods - maize and potatoes —
were higher in caloric value than any old world crops except rice and this
allowed a denser population per square mile than anyplace outside the East
Asian rice-paddy region. Maize alone leads to niacin deficiency and the
disease, pellagra, but middle American Indians soaked maize in a lime
solution that broke down the molecules to make "hominy grits" and allowed
human digestion to synthesize the needed vitamin. In some areas the native
tomatoes were cultivated and eaten also and this further supplied the
otherwise missing vitamins. It is of interest that in the New World, pellagra

became known as "Columbus' sickness". But even before the Spaniards
came, soil erosion in Mexico was already becoming a problem.

The Aztecs ate chiefly tortillas. Beans supplied some protein, the tomato
(originally a weed in the maize fields) supplied vitamins A and C. They
occasionally had wild game and raised small dogs for eating. This dog and
the turkey were their only domesticated livestock. They also ate tadpoles,
water flies' larvae, white worms, frogs, fresh water shrimp, newts, winged
ants, agave worms (Maguey slug) and the iguana. We have mentioned in the
last chapter that they were also somewhat prone to eat human flesh.
Throughout the Caribbean people ate large, fat spiders and plump insects
from decaying wood. Manioc was a Cuban poisonous plant, but properly
prepared it was edible. The roots were peeled and grated and the juice
squeezed out and subsequently boiled to make a harmless sauce, with the
residual sediment making tapioca. The pulp was sieved and shaped into flat
cakes, cooked slowly to make a soft, flexible bread called "cassava". When
dried, it could be kept 2 or 3 years. The manioc root, itself, although protein
deficient, was not eaten by locusts and could be left in the earth as long as 2
years, without deteriorating. (Ref. 211)

NOTE: Insert Map 56. The Aztec, Maya and Inca Empires

Columbus and those who followed started a great exchange of foods. From
Europe to the New World came wheat, chick-peas, sugarcane, some
vegetables and cows. Back to Europe went maize (soon a staple in northern
Spain, Portugal and Italy), potatoes (a source of vitamin C), chocolate,
peanuts, vanilla, tomatoes, pineapples, lima beans, scarlet runner, red
peppers, green peppers, tapioca and the turkey. (Ref. 211) In Mexico the
climate favored the growth of many medicinal plants which were used by
Aztec doctors. Among these were narcotics, medications for abortion,
diarrhea, skin diseases and fever. It is interesting that the Spanish soldiers,
after their arrival, of ten preferred the Aztec physicians to their European
educated ones and in the latter part of the century Philip II sent one of his
physicians, Francisco Hernandez, to Mexico to study native medicine and
make a catalog of medicinal plants. (Ref. 125) We insert parenthetically the
fact that the great majority of the Spanish troops were simple men, merely
fleeing the poverty of Europe. No important Spanish family took any

interest financially, militarily or intellectually in the conquest of the
Americas. (Ref. 62)

Every school child knows how the Aztecs, under King Montezuma, were
brutally conquered by Hernando Cortez and his handful of Spanish soldiers,
in 1521. What is not always realized is that initially the Indians of Mexico
welcomed the white, bearded strangers and it is thought by some that the
Europeans were considered to be gods, returning as prophesied in some of
their ancient legends. At any rate, Cortez landed his ships in the Vera Cruz
area, where there were both Huastecs, who spoke a dialect of Maya and the
Totonacs, who were vassals of the Aztecs. The former were famous for
unusual stone sculptures and may have invented Quetzalcoatl, who became
a primary god of the entire region. When Cortez decided to attack the
Aztecs after 5 months of reconnoitering, the rebellious Totanacs joined him.
(Ref. 236, 45, 273) The numerous Christian friars and priests, who had
accompanied Cortez, learning of the Aztec human sacrifices, were adamant
in the necessity to chastise and then baptize the heathen Indians. With his
Indian mercenaries, picked up along the way, Cortez marched inland toward
the capital city. A relief expedition from Hispaniola in 1520 brought small-
pox which spread ahead of the Spaniards through the Indian population. It
was thus that the disease was raging in Tenochtitlan when Montezuma was
killed by his own rivals, who did not want to surrender to the Spaniards.
The new leader and many of his followers died within hours of the small-
pox, which spread even to Guatemala in the same year. (Ref. 140). Mc Neill
(Ref. 139) con firms that smallpox and measles, brought by Europeans,
killed millions of native Americans and had more to do with the collapse of
the Aztec power than merely military operations. The population of Mexico
dropped from a probable 25,000,000 to 30,000,000 to 3 million by 1568.
(Ref. 140)

Of course the Aztecs and the immediately adjacent tribes were not the only
native inhabitants of Mexico. In the far south Chol-speaking Maya Indians
hunted the Chiapas jungle with bows and arrows and incidentally probably
encountered many of the old abandoned stone cities of their classic
ancestors. The Spanish practically annihilated those people, however,
leaving the Chiapas rain-forest essentially vacant. (Ref. 283)

Within two decades of their first landing in Mexico, the relatively few
Spaniards had explored the New World from the Atlantic to the Pacific and
from Kansas to Argentina. Is there any reason to think that previous sailors
landing on the Gulf end of the Canary current could not have done the
same? (See Chapter 5). The old Mayan Culture had long gone, but some of
the remains were found in Yucatan as early as 1517 by Hernando de
Cordova, whose landing party at Cape Cotoche was ambushed by Indians.
He was attacked again in Champoton where 62 men were killed and many
wounded, so that one ship had to be abandoned because of shortage of crew.
In 1526 Don Francisco de Montego was given license to conquer and
people the "islands" of Yucatan and Cozumel and to take or buy Indians as
slaves. In one battle in this hot, dry land, 1,200 Indians were slaughtered
and at Chichen Itza a second great battle resulted in the loss of 150
Spaniards and the wounding of almost all the rest. By 1535, not a single
Spaniard remained in Yucatan. When some returned in 1537, many were
sacrificed and eaten, but eventually in 1540 the Spanish town of San
Francisco de Campeche was founded. (Ref. 204) Perhaps some of these
Indians were descendants of the ancient Maya, Yucatec-speaking families,
using bows and arrows, were living in the rain forests of Guatemala at that
time. (Ref. 283)

Year by year the map of the New World was charted in gold, silver and
blood. Quickly the Spaniards superimposed their own civilization and by
1539 there was a printing press and by 1551 a university in Mexico City. By
mid-century some 20,000 Negroes had been brought to Cuernavaca and
Vera Cruz. There were productive silver mines in Mexico by the 1540s.
Thomas (Ref. 213) says that while the Spaniards conquered Central and
South America on horses, mules sustained the conquest. Convoys carrying
gold and silver and linking Lima, Cuzco, Panama, Vera Cruz and Mexico
were established with these valuable animals. The great harbor at Porto
Bello, Panama, became the most thriving town in the Americas as the
Atlantic terminal of the mule track across the isthmus carrying the

Notes

Some of the relative values of things in Central America may be seen in
Braudel's (Ref. 292) comments about Panama in 1519. A horse was worth

24 1/2 pesos, an Indian slave 30 pesos and a skin of wine 100 pesos. Pedro
de Alvarado, who had become governor of Guatemala, heard of rich lands
in Peru and led an expedition of 500 men to Quito in 1534, by boat. It is
probably an indication of the long time, extensive maritime experience of
the people of that area that Alvarado's Indian navigator carried him directly
from the Port of Iztopa (near present San Jose, Guatemala) to the Bay of
Manta in Ecuador. That was a trip across open ocean of about 1,300 miles,
minimum. Land travel, however, would have been at least 1,900 miles, not
considering the ups and downs in the mountains, lake detours and the like
through mountainous jungles that were actually probably almost
impassable. (Ref. 36)

The situation in the Caribbean Basin in this century deserves further
discussion. By 1501 Spanish settlers in Hispaniola (Santa Domingo) had
already introduced black slaves, the first in the New World. While
Columbus was kept in the Spanish court, still under the cloud from his 3rd
voyage, Amerigo Vespucci returned from the west Atlantic, proclaiming
that there was an entire continent there, a fact which resulted eventually in
its being named after him. Columbus was finally allowed a 4th trip,
although refused permission to visit his old Santo Domingo domain. He had
150 men in 4 ships and they made the Atlantic crossing on the trade winds,
landing on an island just south of Dominica in 21 days[footnote]. About 2
weeks later he sent a warning to a large Spanish fleet carrying gold that they
should not leave the port of Santo Domingo because of an approaching
hurricane. The fleet commander laughed at the warming and started for
Spain, only to have his flagship go down and his fleet scattered by the
storm. 200,000 castellanos of gold went to the bottom of the Gulf.
Columbus' squadron, anchored in a protected area, escaped damage the first
night, but did receive some battering the next day.

Trager (Ref. 222) has given a gross misstatement on page 161 to the effect
that Columbus' 4th voyage took 8 months for the Atlantic crossing

Columbus initiated further explorations among the Caribbean islands. At
Bonacca he intercepted natives in a large, 8 feet wide dugout canoe,
carrying 25 men and numerous women and children - all wearing dyed
cotton coverings and shirts. The women had colored shawls and the men
carried long, flint-edged, wooden swords and copper hatchets. It has since

become obvious that these Indians were trading between Bonocca and
Honduras. The fleet went on to the mainland, anchoring in a harbor where
later the city of Trujillo, Honduras was to be founded and there encountered
the Jicaque Indians, dressed as those he had seen in the canoe. This was
apparently the remnant of a Mayan Honduran kingdom.

The fleet then sailed south along the coast of Central America, encountering
terrible storms, with Columbus quite ill and eventually they passed present
day Nicaragua and Costa Rica, where they anchored and traded some with
the Talamanca Indians. The Spaniards were impressed with the local fauna,
which included deer, pumas and wild turkey. On farther south in Panama
they encountered Guaymies Indians, who painted their faces white, black
and red and these men even had some real gold. The possibility of mines in
that region enticed Columbus into starting a settlement there. When 10 or
12 houses had been built, it stopped raining and the river mouth, where the
caravels had been anchored, dried up to the point where the ships were
stranded. This was followed by savage Indian attacks which eventually
resulted in the loss of 10 men and abandonment of the village. When the
rains returned the little fleet took off again for Hispaniola, abandoning one
ship, which had been afloat for a year. Two more vessels were leaking badly
and when Jamaica was finally reached these were intentionally run aground
for the remaining 116 men to use as houseboats, as they were no - longer
seaworthy. Two dugout canoes were sent to Santo Domingo for help from
Columbus' old enemy, Governor Ovando; half of the remaining men
mutinied and tried to leave; the Jamaican Indians quit feeding the Spaniards
and relented only when Columbus awed them by predicting the eclipse of
the moon of February 29, 1504. The mutineers were finally defeated and-
ultimately, after more than a year, all were rescued by a ship from Santo
Domingo. Part of the rescued men stayed in the Caribbean to eventually
help to settle Puerto Rico, while the others returned to Spain with
Columbus. The old Spanish queen was dying and Columbus received no

glory.

We have already noted the decimation provoked in the West Indies by
small-pox in 1519. Some type of plague, perhaps typhus or influenza, hit
the islands again in 1567 with some becoming completely depopulated.
(Ref. 260) Early in the century the Spanish abducted the native Arawak

Indians from the Bahamas for slave labor and those islands also remained
uninhabited for more than a century. (Ref. 274) In addition, Spaniards
transported somewhere in the range of 2,000 to 5,000 Indians from the
United States to the West Indies. But the Cuban governor's report of 1530
showed that 1/3 of the island's natives died during the year and this was the
excuse for the importation of African slaves. The viruses brought by these
blacks helped to decimate the Indian natives. Both before and after
Menendez founded St. Augustine, Florida Indians (particularly the
Calyusas) had gone by canoe to Cuba either voluntarily or against their will,
but in any case they died off as fast there as the native Cubans. Menendez
married the daughter of Chief Carlos and when she made a trip to Cuba
with her court, most of them soon died. In 1570, about 100 years after the
arrival of Europeans, the population of Hispaniola had been reduced to 125
people. By the end of the century blacks and whites, along with Indians
imported from elsewhere in the New World, had replaced the aboriginal
populace of the Greater Antilles.

We should note, that just as in the Pacific, ships were not able to go straight
eastward across the Atlantic from the Caribbean, because of the prevailing
winds and currents. Spanish ships first made a rendezvous at Havana, then
sailed close by the Gulf Coast through the Bahama Channel in the Gulf
Stream along the coast to the Carolinas, where westerly winds returned
them to Spain. As previously noted, many were wrecked on the mainland
coasts. (Ref. 267)

SOUTH AMERICA

NORTHERN AND WESTERN SOUTH AMERICA

The first South American contact of the Spaniards occurred in 1501 when
the Bay of Santa Marta and the Gulf of Cartagena in Colombia were
explored. According to the chroniclers the natives were then living on the
seacoast on a 90 mile strip below an altitude of 3,300 feet, engaged in gold
metallurgy. The Spanish called them the Chairamas, whence came the name

of the Tairona society, which may mean a place where metal is melted. The
actual mines may have been located farther west and the Chairamas may
have obtained it from the Taumacos, who dominated the gold bearing
regions. Nevertheless, the fighting between the coast Indians and the
Spaniards was bloody and the latter never did really conquer the area, as the
Taironas withdrew to the mountains where they finally disappeared,
probably from disease and hunger. The ruins of their original settlements
have been in part excavated and have revealed stone buildings reached by
roads and paved stairways some of which were 60 feet wide and by bridges
of stone blocks. There were rock carvings and farming terraces and
artificial mounds, perhaps for ceremonial use.

In the next 25 years several Spanish towns were established along this
northern coast of South America. In 1528 the Welsers of Augsburg even
appeared in Venezuela, but Spanish ill-will and terrible local atrocities
brought their financial enterprises to failure. (Ref. 62, 292)

Before the days of the Spaniards some of the desert coast land of Peru was
inhabited. Every 25 miles or so the desert is cut by a stream or river, which
has created an oasis and made life possible. In the past some of these were
the sites of very large cities, but during Hispanicization provincial life
turned away to the central Andes and the coast remained practically bare.
Like Mexico, parts of South America were densely settled at the time of
European discovery. The Andean population was about 25,000,000 to
30,000,000. The people of Peru were mainly vegetarian, although there
were some fish and occasionally communal game hunts for deer, llamas,
guanacos, bears, pumas, foxes and vizcacha. Guinea pigs were raised in
nearly every household along with ducks. The chief foods, however, were
maize, potatoes, squash, beans, manioc and sweet potatoes, peanuts,
tomatoes, avocados and chili peppers. Maize would not grow above 11,000
feet but potatoes and other tubers such as oca and guinoa, would. The
potatoes were preserved by combined freezing and drying methods and the
result was called "chunu", of greatest importance to highland
People[footnote] The slave workers of the silver mines of Potosi (now in
south central Bolivia) subsisted almost entirely on chunu. That city was
founded in 1545 at the altitude of 13,780 feet and by 1,600 had 100,000
people. Although the Spaniards spent most of their time looking for gold,

silver was the real treasure of South America and soon the quicksilver
mines of Huancavelica in Peru did not supply sufficient mercury for the
amalgam processing in all the American silver mines and additional
supplies had to be shipped from Spain and Yugoslavia. (Ref. 292)

It should be noted that because the Andes Indians had the custom of
replanting the smaller potatoes and eating the larger ones, potatoes at that
time were generally only peanut-sized. The large potato of today is the
product of centuries of more enlightened horticulture. (Ref. 222)

Besides the empire of the Incas, South America had the Chimu Kingdom,
with a capital at Chan Chan and then some less complex societies, called
chiefdoms. Two types of the latter existed: (1) A militaristic society, with
hereditary classes governed by war chiefs and with usually four classes;
caciques or chiefs; people of rank; farmers; and slaves. (2) Theocratic
societies under a shaman who officiated in a temple. War was necessary to
maintain cannibal practices and to procure trophy heads, which were
important symbols in the magic rituals of Chavin, Paracas, Nazca and
Tiahuanaco religions. This rite disappeared in the Inca civilization, which
seems to have taken over the area previously occupied by the Chimu
princes. The explorer Pizarro does not even mention Chan Chan, but those
people left many cultural developments in the central Andes, including
administrative organization, communications by road, agriculture, long
canals allowing intensive farming and perhaps trade and navigation. Their
princes dominated only a few valleys, however, and the Incas exerted a
much greater influence on the region as a whole. (Ref. 62)

In the Peruvian coastal areas which had been irrigated, there was already
considerable salting of the soil and the population was collapsing. In
addition, the small-pox which the Spaniards had brought to Mexico and the
West Indies had spread even faster than they did and it was ravaging Peru
by 1525. The reigning Inca, Huayna Capa, died of the disease and civil war
followed between his two sons. It was into this wreckage of an empire that
in 1532 Francisco Pizarro arrived with 106 foot soldiers and 62 horses. As
when the Europeans landed in Mexico, Pizarro was at first mistaken for a
god, but late in the year he moved his troops inland and seized one of the
warring Inca princes, Atahualpa, in the midst of his vast army at Cajamarca.
Intimidated by the horses and the obvious fire-power, the Indians put up no

resistance, but the prince obtained his temporary release by paying the most
fabulous ransom in history - a chamber 8 feet high filled with various
objects of gold and jewelry along with 2 similar sized rooms filled with
silver. After Pizarro had melted the metal down and distributed part of it
among his men, he conveniently garroted Atahualpa on a false charge and
appointed still another- royal brother, Tupac Hualpa, as the slain emperor's
successor. He did not last long either and was succeeded by Manco. It is no
wonder that relations between the two peoples steadily deteriorated so that
by late 1535 the situation had become intolerable, from the Inca standpoint.

Manco escaped and assembled an army 100,000 strong to start a resistance
to the Spaniards that was to last 36 years. The latter had now been
reinforced and were strongly entrenched at Cuzco so that the Incas were
unable to reclaim that city. Manco retreated to the juncture of the Andes and
the Amazon basin and when pursued even there by a Spanish force, he
retreated to Vitcos in the Vilcabamba River valley. Attacked again, he
retreated once more while the spoils of Vitcos fell to the Spaniards,
including some 20,000 prisoners and 50,000 head of llamas and alpacas.
Hidden in the upper Vilcabamba, Manco recouped his forces, while in the
meantime Pizarro had been murdered in his palace by some of his own
disgruntled soldiers. Some of these then ran and took refuge with Manco
and his Incas, where they taught the Indians the Spanish fighting techniques
and horseback riding. Later these same Spanish renegades turned on Manco
and slew him (1544) leaving the resistance against the Spanish to be led by
Manco's son, Sayri Tupac. Some years later Sayri was offered a pardon by
the Spanish crown and early in 1558 he married his sister, Cusi

Huarcay| footnote]. Actually Sayri was never really crowned and died of
illness in 1560. All five of Atahualpa's daughters married high ranking
Spaniards and the dynasty was eliminated. All of Pizarro's expeditionary
forces eventually met disaster. In addition to his own assassination, his three
brothers all met violent deaths in one fashion or another. His men either had
their heads cut off by the king's executioners or died in brawls or in native
battles. The first bishop of Cuzco, Vincente de Valverd, was eaten by the
inhabitants of Puna Island, while trying to flee back to Spain. (Ref. 62)

As in ancient Egypt, this incestuous situation was the rule among the
imperial family of Peru. (Ref. 62)

In the meantime many other conquistadores were traveling all over the
northern part of South America, looking for gold. In 1535 Sebastian de
Balacazar, veteran of the Inca conquest and founder of Quito, was told of a
king who sprinkled his body with gold dust before swimming in his sacred
lake. The legend named the mysterious king "El Dorado - the Golden man"
and it fanned the lust for the precious metal among all the Spanish
explorers. Gonzalo Jimenez de Quesada led an expedition inland from
Columbia's northern coast in 1536, struggling through forests and swamps.
Decimated by fever, malaria and attacks by hostile natives, only 200 of his
original 900 men reached the Chibcha villages that were strewn across
Colombia's Cundinamarca plateau. He found no gold, but did found the city
of Santa Fe de Bogota, now the capital of Colombia. Others explored this
same country, including the German Nicolaus Federmann and his
countryman Philip von Guttan. Spaniards, including Gonzalo Pizarro,
brother of Francisco and Francisco de Orellana also headed to the interior
and when the latter came down a great river he encountered a tribe whose
long-haired women drew a bow better than any man. Orellana gave the
name "Amazonas" to the river, after those warrior women of the old Greek
legend. Toward the end of the century, the hunt for gold shifted toward
Guiana and then to the island of Trinidad, where the Spanish met the
English adventurer Sir Walter Raleigh, who was on a similar search.
Eventually some gold was found between the years 1525 and 1533 in
Colombia and as has been noted, Potosi in Bolivia became for 100 years the
biggest source of silver in the world. (Ref. 176, 175, 8)

After conquering the Incas in Peru, the Spanish tried to extend down into
Chile about 1536, but they were pretty well stopped by the cannibalistic
Araucanian Indians. Pedro de Valdiva did reach far enough south to found
the city of Santiago in Chile by 1541. There, eventually as elsewhere in
South America, silver mines were found and worked by the natives under
Spanish direction. Recent study of skeletons of colonial Indians who mined
silver in Tarapaca, of northern Chile, has shown evidence of the
occupational illness of pneumoconiosis and silicosis from silver mining.
Little is known of the Araucanians who lived on the western slope of the
Chilean cordillera and on Chiloe Island prior to the arrival of the Spaniards.
There were at least three groups, each speaking a dialect of an exclusive
South American language. Estimations of their number, when the Spaniards

arrived, vary from 500,000 to 2,000,000. Peaceful relations with them were
not really established until the 18th century, although they were farmers and
not basically hunters. Only the Quechus and Aymaras tribes were city
builders, while the Mapuches lived more agricultural lives. The tribes
fought each other and captives were ritually tortured and sacrificed.
Cannibalism was practiced. (Ref. 175, 3, 62)

A few last words are indicated before we leave the west coast of South
America. In 1526 when Francisco Pizarro left the Panamanian isthmus on
his second and most intensive voyage down the coast, he encountered
Peruvian merchant rafts coming north — rafts as large as Pizarro's caravel.
The first one was a 36 ton raft with 20 Indians, masts with cotton sails, well
rigged. The secret of control lay with multiple center-boards (guaras) in line
along the center of the vessels, the skillful use of which allowed steering
and beating up-wind to some degree. Some of the larger vessels had
thatched bamboo huts with 4 or 5 rooms. They often carried salt along with
other provisions for the 200 to 300 hundred mile trips between ports. Dry
balsa wood would be too water absorbent for these rafts, but green balsa,
when put to sea still filled with sap, is very water resistant. The description
of these vessels from the early Spaniards is indisputable evidence that the
Peruvians were capable of extensive ocean travel. (Ref. 95)

EASTERN AND CENTRAL SOUTH AMERICA

Horses which had been introduced far to the west in Peru by Pizarro were,
within a few years, to be found running in large, wild herds even in the
pampas of eastern South America. Sugar cane reached Brazil in about 1520
and sugar mills were set up in about 1550, so that soon there appeared the
eternal trinity - the master's house, the slaves cabins and the sugar mill. Still
the master had to sell his product and it was European trade that
commanded production and output in Brazil and elsewhere in the New
World. (Ref. 292) As early as 1521 the Portuguese began building forts in
Brazil, hoping to reach the legendary empire of gold from the east, across
the Chaco. The Guaranis tribes, already used to pillaging the rich Incanized
slopes of the eastern Andes, helped the Portuguese expeditions. When the
Spaniard Martinez de Irala reached the upper Andes in 1548, that part of

Peru and Bolivia were already under Portuguese control. But Asuncion,
now in Paraguay, 600 miles inland from the Atlantic, had been settled in
1542 by the Spaniard de Vaca[footnote]. Farther south the Spaniards had
constant skirmishes with the Diaguites, who now used bow and arrows, but
who were soon wiped out by disease. According to one priest, the Diaguites
practiced circumcision, which recalls our note on page 212 regarding
Mochican pottery vessels depicting circumcised prisoners. South of the
Diaguites but still east of the cordillera there was a small group, the
Huarpes, who may have been related to the former, but were described as
tall, thin, brown men with lots of hair. The Chacos lived on the savannahs
farther east and much farther south lived the Comechingons, between about
the 29th and 34th parallels. The first Europeans to see them described them
ashaving beards and wearing long, wool tunics. The chroniclers added that
the Comechingons could mobilize as many as 40,000 warriors, although
Engel (Ref. 62) feels that this must be an exaggeration.

Other authorities state that the Spanish entered Paraguay in 1524,
intermarrying with the Guarani and founding Asuncion in 1537. (Ref. 175)

Bahia was founded as the administrative capital for the Portuguese in 1549
and between 1575 and 1600 coastal Brazil had become the foremost sugar
producing territory in the western world, averaging 1,600 tons a year,
shipped to Europe. Soon there were shops on the streets of Sao Paulo and
after 1580 Portuguese middlemen invaded the whole of Spanish America as
shopkeepers and peddlers. The natives were nomadic and not easily made
into a labor force and tended to slip away as the Portuguese arrived, so
slave ships shuttled between Angola and Brazil, with payment given in
Africa in low grade Brazilian tobacco. Then in half a century Paulist
bandeiras spread out from Sao Paulo over half the continent from the Rio de
la Plata to the Amazon and Andes in search of slaves, precious stones and
gold. (Ref. 260) It has been estimated that by 1583 there were 25,000
whites, 18,000 civilized Indians and 14,000 Negro slaves in the territory.
The towns of Brazil, which Braudel (Ref. 260) has described as so many
miniature versions of Sparta or Thebes, were run by the men of property,
the Spanish cabildos.

Argentina had been discovered even earlier in 1516 by the Spanish Juan
Diaz de Solis and the coasts explored by Diego Garcia in 1526. Buenos

Aires was founded in 1534 by Pedro de Mendoza but the village soon died
out or was destroyed. When it was rebuilt in 1580 it was chiefly by
Portuguese merchants. Their ships streamed west across the Atlantic laden
with rice, fabrics, black slaves and perhaps some gold, would arrive at
Buenos Aires, then go up the Rio de la Plata to Ascension, where they
would trade for silver reals coming down the Pilcomayo River. (Ref. 292)

Magellan and 265 men rounded Cape Horn as early as 1520 on their famous
globe circling trip, but it was about 1579 that Europeans came in contact
with the natives of Patagonia. They were described as being light-skinned
men with thick, bushy black, wiry hair, who smeared their bodies with red
paint and grease. The Europeans attempted a colony there and brought
sheep, which the Patagonians promptly hunted. Today there are no true
Patagonians left. Additional Notes

Forward to America: A.D. 1601 to 1700
Choose Different Region

. Intro to Era

. Africa

. Central and Northern Asia
. Europe

. The Far East

. The Indian Subcontinent

. The Near East

. Pacific

CONAUBWN FE

Note:The seat of the Spanish government in Central America was at
Gracias, Honduras briefly in the 1540s, but then moved to Guatemala in
1,549. Lempira was a great Indian leader, who fought against the Spanish
conquest for two years in Honduras, beginning in 1537. Trujillo, on the
Honduras Caribbean coast, was an early Spanish stronghold, with a
massive brick fortress with the cannon pointed seaward. (Ref. 308)

Note:Magellan named the island off the southern tip of South America
"Tierra del Fuego" because the natives had not yet learned how to kindle a
flame and they had to keep their campfires burning all the time. (Ref. 302)
In the service of Spanish merchants, the Portuguese Sebastian Cabot
reached the Rio de la Plata about 1530

America: A.D. 1601 to 1700

AMERICA

Back to America: A.D. 1501 to 1600

NORTH AMERICA (See map in next module)

In the early 17th century northern Europeans, already experienced in
smuggling and raiding Spanish-American shipping, began to establish
permanent colonies of their own in America. The north Europeans '
advantages included their access to the sources of shipbuilding material
(particularly around the Baltic), fewer political commitments and
diversification of European interests and finally more sophisticated devices
for obtaining capital and spreading risks - the chartered joint-stock
company. (Ref. 8)

CANADA AND THE FAR NORTH

The Thule Arctic Culture, which has been discussed in several previous
chapters, is generally conceded to have ended about 1700, merging into the
Modern Eskimo Culture. Samuel Champlain was sent out to Canada from
France in 1603 to map the known rivers. Establishing Quebec as a base, he
explored Lakes Huron and Ontario and sided with the Algonquin and Huron
Indians, while defeating the hostile Iroquois. The Jesuit priest, Pierre
Francois Xavier de Charlevoix, who wrote a Histoire de'la Nouvelle France
in the 18th century, accumulated much information about the French-
Iroquois war of 1610. He told of terrible atrocities committed by the Hurons
on the Iroquois prisoners, including cannibalism| footnote]. Champlain was
the most versatile of colonial founders, a sailor, soldier, scholar and man of
action, artist and explorer. (Ref. 151) The friendly Hurons became the
middlemen for the fur trade between Montreal and the Indian trappers of
the Great Lakes areas. Nova Scotia was founded as the French colony of
Acadia in 1632. (Ref. 222)

This information is found in de Tocqueville (Ref. 218), pages 337 and 338).

At the death of Champlain in 1635 Canada was the property of a joint-stock
company, the Hundred Associates. Settlement advanced very slowly,
however, and by 1643, a year after a stronghold had been built at Montreal,
there were not 300 Frenchmen in all New France, exclusive of Nova Scotia.
Even by 1665 Quebec contained only 70 houses and 550 people. The
French fur traders, however, soon carried their commerce 2,000 miles
inland to the Tetons. They could live on the barest vegetation and in the
crudest shelter, in terrible weather. It was those French guides who later
staffed the Lewis and Clark expedition. (Ref. 151, 39) In 1685 the governor
of Canada wrote to Louis XIV complaining that the colonial French had not
civilized the Indians, but on the contrary, the Frenchmen who lived among
the savages themselves became savages. (Ref. 217)

Throughout the entire first 2/3 of the century New France had to continually
fight the Five Nations of the Iroquois League and largely because of this the
Hundred Associates gave up in 1663 and surrendered their charter, allowing
Canada to become a crown colony of Louis XIV. In 1665 the Marquis de
Tracy arrived with 800 soldiers to wage a total war campaign against the
Iroquois, killing and burning their fields and villages. (Ref. 39) The new
military regime was absolute, with severe laws stringently enforced by
torture, when necessary. The Marquis’ chief claim to fame is that he brought
girls along to be the soldiers' wives and these, along with a few descendants
of extraneous unions of coureurs de bois with young Indian girls, are
primarily the ancestors of all present day French-Canadians.

Robert Cavelier de La Salle, born at Rouen and educated in a Jesuit
seminary, emigrated to Canada early in life and from letters brought to life
much later, it is apparent that he started his first exploratory trip south from
Canada as early as 1671. In 1675 he visited France and received a grant of
the government and property at Fort Frontenac (now Kingston, Ontario),
which had been previously established in 1672 under the name of Fort
Cataraqui. La Salle rebuilt the fort and in the spring of 1678 was
commissioned to undertake the exploration of the Mississippi River. (Ref.
63) We shall here more of him in the next section.

The first commercial venture into the Hudson Bay area was in 1668 when
Fort Charles was built by Scottish entrepreneurs. Two years later the
Hudson Bay Company was chartered with title to nearly 1.5 million square
miles of territory. French and Scotch-English fought minor skirmishes in
this region over control of the land and its furs for the next 100 years. (Ref.
212)

THE UNITED STATES

By this time the eastern Woodland Indians were using some 275 plants for
medicine, 130 for food, 31 as magic, 27 for smoking, 25 for dyes, 18 in
beverages or flavoring and 52 for various other purposes. Most of the tribes
of the northern United States and southern Canada belonged to the
Algonquian linguistic stock, comprised of the Micmacs, Wabanakis,
Etchemis, Montaignais, Natick, Abnaki, Massachuset, Penobscot,
Wamponoag and Delawares, in the eastern area. The original name for the
Delawares was "Lanape" and there is some evidence that they may have
had some contact with the Dutch as early as 1609. Squeezed between the
New York state Iroquois League, the Susquehannocks and the more
southern Powhatan Confederacy, part of the Lenape moved on west and
part stayed to become dependent on and eventually in some degree to fuse
with the European settlers. (Ref. 253) The early history of the Shawnees is
not known with certainty, but they considered the Delewares their
"grandfathers". By 1650 they were living in southern Ohio and northern
Kentucky where they remained for several years. Then, after quarrels with
neighbors, they dispersed somewhat, from the Gulf Coast to the Delaware
Valley in western New Jersey. (Ref. 293)

In what was then the "west", in addition to the Shawnee, were the
Potowatami, Menominee, Cree, Ojibwa, Ottawa, Arapaho, Blackfoot and
Cheyenne. A most interesting observation, recently validated to some extent
by Professor Fell, is that the most western of these tribes have Mongolian
physical features and Siberian root vocabularies, while their eastern cousins
have markedly European physiognomies and marked grammatical and
vocabulary similarities to the Semitic language of the Phoenicians (or North
Africans). Even a few Celtic words have penetrated the eastern Algonquian

dialects and finally there are some Norse words. Fell feels that the eastern
Algonquians themselves are in great part descended from early
Mediterranean colonizers and their tribal traditions, which included their
ancestors crossing the sea and some of the local archaeological evidence,
might be confirmatory. (Ref. 122) Few historians would back up Fell in
these hypotheses and apparently no blood factor studies have been done that
might tend to either deny or confirm such ideas. The Indians of North
America used little cylinders cut from blue or violet sea-shells threaded on
a string as money called "wampum". Even Europeans used this legitimately
until 1670 and some even after that. (Ref. 260) In 1649 the Virginia
assembly had even set standard values - one yard of wampum (peake or
roanoke) equaled two shillings sixpence and one fathom equaled five
shillings. If the peake was black it had double the value. (Ref. 267)

Early Spanish, French and English colonists in southeastern United States
encountered a 50 settlement confederation of the Creek Indian Confederacy
in an area now consisting of Alabama and Georgia. The confederacy
included various peoples with several languages, including Chickasaw and
Choctaw. To the north of the Creek also lived the Cherokees, some 60,000
strong in about 100 settlements. Their ancestors had built large mounds in
West Virginia and Tennessee. On the lower Mississippi were the Natchez,
inheritors of the Mississippian Culture. (Ref. 215) Mystery surrounds the
Westos and Ricahecrians, who appeared menacingly on the South Carolina
and Virginia frontiers in this century. Were they one and the same people?
Did they speak Iroquoian or Siouan? Many of the coastal Indians relied
heavily on the sea, eating mollusks and catching fish with spears. Bows and
arrows, bone hooks, basket traps and poisons. Until Franciscans established
missions and promoted agriculture, Gaule Indians in coastal Georgia
depended primarily on marine life. As agriculture spread, time became
available for perfection of crafts such as basket-making, carpentry,
woodworking, pipe-making, weaving, pottery, tanning and even certain
kinds of metal work. Tobacco cultivation created a demand for pipes, some
finely wrought from clay and decorated. (Ref. 267)

The Calusa were not typical southern Indians and there is much mystery
about them, also. They were excellent seamen, constructing large,
seaworthy, dugout canoes, some of which would hold up to 80 men. Among

almost all southern Indians the men were tall for that time, usually 5'6" but
some 6' or more. Both sexes were well proportioned, with the men wearing
deerskin breechcloths and the women skirts. Mantles of deer, bear or
buffalo skins, woven feathers and Spanish moss provided warmth in the
winter. Elaborate tattooing was widespread, with extensive body decoration
indicating higher rank. Ornaments were worn by men and women alike.
They lived in an essentially law-abiding society, although their laws and
morals were different than their later white counterparts. Men could have as
many wives as they could afford and young girls normally had sexual
relations freely. Divorce was easy, but adultery resulted in severe
punishment both for the guilty one and the clan. There is little question that
Indians scalped their victims, even before Europeans arrived. (Ref. 267)

The Powhatans in the Virginia Tidewater were the most densely populated
of any Indians of the south, and even in 1650 after white contact had begun
its depopulation from disease, Dobyns| footnote] estimated that there were
1,357,000 Indians in the South as a whole. Archeological finds backup this
high population density. We have already detailed in the last chapter the
story of the early Spanish explorations in the southern United States and
something about their contacts with the Indians. The early English crossing
of the Atlantic westward had to take essentially the same course as
Columbus and the Spanish, because of the currents and winds that have
been mentioned on several occasions. Raleigh's expedition to Roanoke
Island, in the last century, sailed through the West Indies before the Gulf
Stream carried his ships northward and the early Jamestown settlers had to
follow the same course. In the first half of the 17th century 60,000
Englishmen sought refuge in the New World, chiefly in the United States.
In addition there were a few Dutchmen and Frenchmen and a sprinkling of
Swedes and Finns, as we shall see below. After the original colonization
period along the Atlantic coast, there was a period from about 1640 to 1660
when the colonies were left pretty much alone, because of civil war and its
sequelae in England. From 1675 to 1691 or after, however, there was a time
of troubles in the colonies, including Indian Wars, local rebellions, French
incursions, etc. It will be most convenient to discuss the history of this
century under regional headings:

Dobyns was a source mentioned by Wright (Ref. 267), page 24.

NEW ENGLAND COLONIES

This designation included colonies of New Hampshire, Massachusetts Bay,
Rhode Island and Connecticut. By 1700 there were 130,000 people in this
geographical area, with 7,000 in Boston and 2,600 in Newport. These
settlers all belonged to the more independent classes and possessed a great
mass of intelligence, which was to greatly influence the government and
commerce of America for generations to come. (Ref. 217) The first
Englishman to explore the New England area was Bartholomew Gosnold,
who sailed from the Azores in 1602 to go along the coast from Maine to
Cape Cod. He built a house on Cuttyhunk, traded with Indians and left
smallpox on the new continent. He was followed by Thomas Hunt, taking
Indians as slaves in 1615 and perhaps again introducing smallpox. By 1617
an epidemic of this disease reduced the Indian population by over a
thousand, some say as much as 10,000. (Ref. 222)

NEW HAMPSHIRE

Two small proprietary colonies were set up - one in New Hampshire and
one in Maine. The latter belonged to Sir Ferdinando Gorges, whose heirs
soon sold out to Massachusetts, but small settlements at Portsmouth and
Exeter, N.H., which began as personal estates of Captain John Mason,
persisted even af ter being sold to the crown. New Hampshire was not truly
a separate province from Massachusetts until after 1691. In 1690 the first
man-of-war built for the British navy in America, the "Falkland", was
completed at Portsmouth, New Hampshire.

MASSACHUSETTS BAY

Some Puritan separatists, who had seceded from the Church of England to
the Netherlands, under William Brewster and accompanied by William
Bradford, founded the new Plymouth colony in 1620. They immediately set
up their own self government under the Mayflower compact. The
Mayflower expedition was subsidized by a loan of 7,000 pounds and it had
149 people, including about 40 "separatists" (i.e. separating from the
English Church), chiefly from Leyden where they had previously gone. In

the first winter in the new land over 1/2 died of scurvy or general debility.
They had tried to hit northern Virginia, but missed their target. After the
first few seasons, William Bradford became their governor. These Pilgrims
deserve to be famous for two things; first, they survived and secondly they
proclaimed the Mayflower compact, a bold assertion of their right to self -
government. Following the Mayflower was the great Puritan migration of
the 1630s. The promoters of the Massachusetts Bay Colony put up 200,000
pounds. The group was led by John Winthrop, a Puritan (different from the
"Separatists"), who only wanted to "purify" the Church of England. They
first sailed in March, 1630 with 500 men, women and children. On arrival,
they raised cattle, Indian corn and vegetables and soon developed both a fur
trade and cod fishing. Winthrop was very concerned about the saintliness of
his colony, but not his customers, as he sold cod and later ships to Roman
Catholics and to slave-holding Virginian planters alike. This colony was at
once a theocracy and an oligarchy, yet it adopted trial by jury, freedom from
self-incrimination, and levied no taxes on those who could not vote. But
there was no religious tolerance. Baptists and Quakers-were the Devil's
agents and the Quakers were the worst. By the penal law of the colony any
Catholic priest, who reappeared there after having once been driven out,
was subject to death. (Ref. 217) Witchcraft was persecuted, but chiefly after
Winthrop's death. (Ref. 39) The Puritan migrations continued until 1637
when the English Puritans decided to stay and contest their fate in England,
itself, as its Civil War started. That war kept Charles I from suppressing the
Bay Colony and its government became a model for the other colonies. In
1634 Massachusetts joined with her neighboring Puritan colonies to form
the New England Confederation. This was a loose union formed to settle
boundary disputes and give mutual protection from Indians, French and
Dutch. Free, public education was soon established, a printing press
appeared in Cambridge in 1639 and Harvard University was established in
the same city in 1650.

In 1675 serious Indian troubles began in the so-called King Philip's War.
Metacom, chief of the Wampanoag and called King Philip by the English,
was one of the original friends of the Pilgrim fathers and a frequent patron
of Boston stores. But he became surly over various chastisements and
developed a plot to attack the settlers. The chief's Harvard educated Indian
secretary, Sassamon, tipped off Governor Winslow, however, and Sassamon

was subsequently killed by other Indians. The murderers were found, tried
and hanged. Two weeks later war broke out with Philip's Wampanoag and
their allies, the Nipmuch. The New England Confederation retaliated with a
declaration of war, thus involving Connecticut. The Indians were not
organized and had only hit and run tactics. The Narragansett tribe on the
Bay sheltered some of the Indian refugees, giving Winslow the excuse to
attack them with 1,000 men and finally winning in the roughest battle ever
fought on New England soil, save the later battle of Bunker Hill. Philip was
killed in August 1676 and most of his Indians were captured. The women
and children were used as house servants and the men were shipped to the
West Indies as slaves. The war in the area of Maine did not end until 1678
and the Indians there retained their land and later helped the French against
the English. (Ref. 222)

When the Catholic king, James II, assumed the English throne in 1685 the
Massachusetts Bay Colony was given a new administrator, Sir Edmund
Andros. When William and Mary ascended the English throne, however,
the people of Boston jailed Andros and returned to their pre-Andros
government. New troubles began in 1689 when the French and their Indian
allies began to raid in Maine and New Hampshire. The New England
authorities at Boston struck back directly at Port Royal and Quebec, as the
first offensive of the King William's War. The campaign, under Sir William
Phips in 1690, was a fiasco. The dreary war dragged on and although King
William ended the European end of the conflict in 1697 with the Treaty of
Ryswick (see Europe), the American battles continued until 1699.

RHODE ISLAND

This Puritan colony was founded by the Reverend Roger Williams, who had
been banished from the Massachusetts Colony. Williams was loved by the
Indians, lodged with them, learned their language and respected them. He
felt that it was possible that God might feel their religion equal to
Christianity, a heresy of that day. The only unity in the colony was one of
religious liberty. Its fate was to be found with the other Puritan colonies in
the New England Confederation.

CONNECTICUT

Connecticut, too, was formed as a migration from the Massachusetts
colony, led by the Reverends Hooker and Stone. The original settlements
were along the Connecticut River at Hartford, Windsor and Wethersfield.
New Haven was settled separately, but all joined together as Connecticut, in
1662. A code of laws was drawn up, beginning with penal laws, which were
actually borrowed from the Bible. (Ref. 217) Like Rhode Island, this
colony's history in this century is bound to that of Massachusetts, in the
Confederation.

MIDDLE COLONIES

This designation included New York, New Jersey and Pennsylvania along
with the small area of Delaware. By 1700 there were approximately 65,000
people in this group of settlements.

NEW YORK

In 1609 Henry Hudson sailed up the river bearing his name and by 1629 his
Dutch people had settled New Amsterdam at the mouth of the river, using a
Dutch Company charter. The famous purchase of Manhattan Island from
the Wappinger Indian Confederacy for a few trinkets occurred in 1626.
(Ref. 222) The social structure was a type of feudalism and the colony did
not do well. By 1660 New Netherland had only 1/2 the population of
Connecticut. The Dutch traded with the Delaware Indians some, but then
got into warfare at the future site of Esopus on the Hudson. The Delawares
then sold most of their land and moved to the Susquehanna Valley in
Pennsylvania. In 1644, as a by-product of a Dutch-English War, the Duke of
York sailed into the New Amsterdam harbor with four English frigates and
took the city without a shot being fired. New York has never been racially
or geographically homogeneous, even in the beginning. The Jesuit Simon
Le Moyne visited the area of future Syracuse in 1654, finding important salt
deposits there.

New York did not contribute to the defense of New England in their early
troubles and the Duke of York pretty well made his own laws and levied his
own taxes. The province extended from Canada to the edge of Maryland
and the cost of administration was great.

In 1683 the Duke instructed his Irish governor, Colonel Thomas Dongan, to
summon an assembly primarily for the purpose of raising f unds. It met and
enacted "The Charter of Liberties and Privileges", declaring that the
assembly had the supreme legislative authority and that no taxes were to be
levied without its consent. Shortly thereaf ter, however, the erstwhile Duke
of York had become King James 11 and he promptly disallowed this
declaration of rights and New York became a royal province, with no
assembly. With the subsequent banishment of King James, there was much
confusion in the colony and this was augmented by a combined French and
Indian attack from the north, resulting in the destruction of the town of
Schenectady.

NEW JERSEY

The Duke of York originally gave New Jersey as a gift to two friends,
George Carteret and Lord John Berkeley. Philip Carteret, cousin of Sir
George, came over from England to take possession in 1665. He gave a
liberal grant of political privileges - the best on the continent - to the few
hundred Dutchmen and English Puritans who lived there. A representative
assembly first met in 1668. The situation became very complicated a few
years later when there were two Jersies - East New Jersey, with an assembly
meeting at Elizabethtown and a West New Jersey, with an assembly
meeting at Salem or Burlington. Confusion in land titles for the next 75
years resulted from these conflicts. The proprietors did not surrender their
governmental powers to the crown until 1702.

PENNSYLVANIA

William Penn got the charter for Pennsylvania from Charles IT in 1681 and
brought over Quaker dissidents from England, Wales, the Netherlands and

France. The voyage took two months and one-third of his people died of
small-pox, en route. (Ref. 222) The Quakers, as we have noted previously,
were a left wing Puritan sect founded by George Fox in 1650. Penn
established the city of Philadelphia in 1682, where some Swedes and Finns
were already settled. Germans of the Mennonite sect soon also arrived and
settled, so that by 1700 Philadelphia had outstripped New York City and
was pushing Boston as a cultural center. Yellow fever killed 220 people in
Philadelphia at the end of the century. (Ref. 222)

DELAWARE

The Swedish West India Company had established the small colony of New
Sweden, centering on Fort Christina on the site of present Wilmington, in
1638. This consisted of only 200 to 300 Swedes and Finns, but they brought
log construction and the log cabin to America. Peter Stuyvesant, of the New
Netherland Colony, annexed this weak Swedish settlement in 1655 so that
when the Duke of York took over the Dutch possessions, this area became
part of that. William Penn later purchased the region from the Duke and for
years it was called the "Three Lower Counties" of Pennsylvania. The
Charter of Privileges, which Penn brought back in 1699, allowed these three
counties to have their own assembly, but their governor was always the
Same as Pennsylvania's. These three counties, however, were the future
state of Delaware. (Ref. 151)

CHESAPEAKE BAY COLONIES

VIRGINIA

The first true and lasting settlement in the United States was made at
Jamestown, off Chesapeake Bay, in 1607 by Englishmen who, according to
de Tocqueville (Ref. 217), "were seekers of gold, adventurers without
resources and without character.”[ footnote] Existence in this nucleus of the
Dominion of Virginia in the early days, was miserable. Of the initial group,
consisting of 104 men and boys, 51 died of disease and starvation within 6

months. Help from Indians and the arrival of a supply ship saved the rest.
That ship also brought 2 women and 5 Poles, who had been recruited to
begin the production of pitch, tar and turpentine. (Ref. 151) In the end,
however, salvation came with the Indian crop, tobacco. (Ref. 39) Between
the years 1616 and 1624 Virginia was changed from a trading post to more
of a genteel, permanent community. There were several factors in this
transition. One was tobacco, of which Virginia exported some 50,000
pounds as early as 1618. A second factor was the institution of private
property and a third reason was political, in that English common law was
in effect along with a representative assembly.

Quotation from page 30 of de Tocqueville (Ref. 217)

The Indians of the Tidewater at the time of the planting of the Jamestown
colony were the powerful Powhatan Confederacy (Tsenacommacah). They
were Algonquians, but Iroquois, Sioux and Muskogeans all lived close by.
There were rumors of blond, blue-eyed Indians to the south, but these were
probably survivors from Raleigh's lost colony or shipwrecks. Although a
century earlier Tsenacommacah may have had over 100,000 inhabitants, the
population was considerably less in this 17th century. The microparasites
introduced by the visits of Verazzano, Menendez and Raleigh had already
done much of their destructive work. Contemporary writers accused the
Powhatans of sacrificing children, but this was a mistaken concept of the
huskanaw, an initiation rite in which at the appropriate time children were
collected and sent to a designated spot in the woods, where for weeks they
subsisted on a limited diet. Perhaps some drugs and rigorous mental and
physical ordeals were supervised by their priests, but they were not killed,
although some of the weaker may have perished. The local chief at the time
of the Jamestown founding was Powhatan, whose daughter was the famous
Pocahontas, captured in 1613 by Samuel Argall, to be used to influence the
chief to make peace. She married John Rolfe in 1614, visited England and
died there in 1617, though her son Thomas survived. Thomas Rolfe was not
the only mestizo born from the white-Indian contact at Jamestown. (Ref.
267)

The Virginia Company was reorganized in 1619 and a new leadership was
established. Captain George Thorpe, a pious Anglican, who had started to
build a college in Jamestown, might have risen to leadership, but in 1622

Opechancanough, successor to Chief Powhatan, rebelled and massacred
some 300 whites, burying an axe in Thorpe's skull. Thereafter the settlers
waged a relentless war against the Indians, burning and pillaging their
villages and cutting down or carrying off their crops. This also gave the
opportunity for capturing slaves, which the English, as the Spanish before
them, did with enthusiasm, using them locally or sending them to Bermuda
or Barbados. A treaty was negotiated with the rebellious tribes in the
Potomac River area in 1623. After a toast was drunken symbolizing eternal
friendship, the Chiskiack chief and his sons, advisers and followers totaling
200, abruptly dropped dead from poison and soldiers put the remainder out
of their misery. It was perhaps from this encounter that Captain William
Tucker and his men brought back 50 Indian "heads", presumably scalps,
though somewhat more may have been included. The second and last major
conflict in the Tidewater was the 1644 massacre, plotted again by the aged
Opechancanough, with more than 500 colonists killed. One out of every 16
Virginians perished. (Ref. 267)

In the meantime in 1624 Virginia had become a crown colony with a
governor and council appointed by the king and it was well governed and
prospered. Although the Indians had grown and smoked tobacco for
centuries, their variety was too bitter for the whites and John Rolfe
imported a new species from the West Indies and perfected a method of
curing it. This was the tobacco that was to be exported. The transplanted
English soon imported or manufactured locally their own wampum, the
blue beads which had become standard trade items. An aboriginal canoe in
1624 was worth 10,000 blue beads, a stack of mats brought 20,000.

The most serious Indian conflict in the latter half of the century was the
fighting associated with Bacon's rebellion. Susquehannocks had moved into
the Potomac area and although they at first were treated badly, Governor
Berkeley had them protected by scattered forts.

But whites continued to be killed, including the overseer at the plantation of
Nathanial Bacon, Jr., so Bacon and his neighbors denounced the governor
for depending so much on the frontier forts and implied that he had a secret
interest in Indian trade. Bacon's men surprised the Occanechees, who were
allies of the Susquehannocks, burning and capturing their fort and shooting

or burning to death almost all the Indians. Hostilities flared all along the
frontier and Governor Berkeley finally in June of 1676, authorized a full
campaign against the natives, with Bacon as commander. When Bacon
became sick and died, however, Berkeley regrouped and had Bacon's
followers executed and their property confiscated. Although he then
negotiated still another treaty with the Indians, the whites continued their
destruction so that by 1700 there were only approximately 1,400 aborigines
left in the Tidewater. Near the end of the century the depleted Powhatans
were led by the good Queen of Pamunkey, who actually accepted a tributary
status to the whites. The English policy of encouraging tribal rivalries, of
dividing and conquering, had succeeded. Farther inland the Tuscarora,
Cherokee and Seneca warriors, although possibly never seeing a white face,
were well aware of their presence in the Tidewater because of the
commerce and the small-pox epidemics that reached them. (Ref. 267)

We should add a few final notes before we leave Virginia in this early
colonial period. In 1609 "Martin's Hundred" had made a settlement at
Walstenholme. It was actually larger than Jamestown, but it disappeared in
an Indian massacre and has only recently been excavated. The "dig" shows
that the Englishmen were in full metal armor like medieval knights and the
heavy armor and a closed helmet hampered movement, restricted vision and
muffled warning signs of approaching enemies. It is no wonder they were
no match for the Indians. (Ref. 102) An interesting sidelight is also to be
found in recent recovered fragments from a 1619 shipwreck in Castle
Harbor - 5 sherds of Roman pottery. It was initially thought that these might
have been picked up from old gravel beds along the Thames, used for
ballast pebbles in the ship, but experts have said definitely that the gravel
did not come from the Thames. So, the riddle of Roman pottery in Castle
Harbor remains unsolved. (Ref. 103) Could this have some bearing on
Barry Fell's hypotheses about European visitors to the American
hemisphere around the time of Christ? Finally we should note that English
ships brought the first black slaves to Virginia in 1619[footnote] but in the
first 40 years no more than 300 arrived altogether. By the 1680s, however,
they were brought in at the rate of 60,000 every decade. (Ref. 39) In time
both Negro and Indian slavery assumed more and more importance in
Virginia. Often young Indians were taken into apprenticeships, but of ten
the terms never expired and in essence it was still slavery. According to a

1669 law, foreign - that is non-Virginian Indians - captured in war and those
imported by sea and sold, were to remain slaves for life. Governor Berkeley
owned native slaves. A frequent reason for the hostilities with Indian
enemies and allies, alike, was the opportunity to capture slaves. Rather than
peltry, they were the real plunder. The Indians them- selves kept slaves and
had severe punishments for runaways. They severed their Achilles tendons
or cut off their toes and half of their feet, carefully folding the skin over the
stumps so that they would heal. The slaves could then work in the field, but
could hardly run away again.

This is the date given by Alestair Cooke (Ref. 39), but de Tocqueville,
quoting Beverley's History of Virginia, says the date was 1621. (Ref. 217),
page 360

MARYLAND

Maryland was a part of Virginia until 1632 when King Charles I gave a
Slice of that original colony to his friend, Lord Baltimore (George Calvert
of an old Yorkshire family). Baltimore died quickly, however, and his son
got the charter and administered Maryland from England. It was basically a
Catholic colony and although named Maryland ostensibly after Queen
Henrietta Marie, it was in reality named in honor of the Virgin Mary.
Tobacco was the one great cash crop. Servants might be of any class from
poor gentlemen working off the cost of transport, to convicted felons. Many
of the English sovereigns transported Scottish and Irish prisoners from the
civil wars to Virginia and Maryland, as well as to the West Indies. Negroes
were also imported and in 1664 the Maryland assembly passed a "black
code" which declared each Negro to be a slave for life by virtue of his color.
At all times during the century, except for a short period in the 1650s,
Catholics were the ruling class in this colony, although with increased
immigration Protestants became finally the overwhelming numerical
majority. (Ref. 151)

THE CAROLINAS

In this century the English began referring to the great land south of the
James River as "Carolina". Going south from the James, one had to go 500
miles to encounter another European settlement and that would be the
Franciscan mission at Port Royal Sound. Mississippian style villages with
council houses or rotundas, plazas and fields of maize were still present
throughout that area. Lord Ashley (John Colleton, a Barbadian planter)
received a Charter for the Carolinas in 1963, but there was no settlement
there until 1670, when Charleston was founded. Even then little was
accomplished until the Huguenots came in 1680. Those French formed,
eventually, the aristocratic South Carolina while North Carolina was settled
by poor whites moving in from Virginia. The two Carolinas were not
separated in this 17th century, however.

The aborigines surrounding Charleston already had guns, which they had
obtained from the Spaniards and even from some Virginia traders. Some
tribes, such as the Westos, were well armed, using more European weapons
than bows and arrows and they terrified their less well-armed neighbors at
the time. They lived on the Savannah or Westo River near present day
Augusta, in part of the kingdom of the Cofitachique. Whether there was any
connection between the two tribes in uncertain. The Westos have now
become extinct, apparently having been destroyed by the Shawnees
(Savannahs) who subsequently migrated westward again into Alabama,
then northward into Kentucky and the Ohio country and eventually to
Oklahoma. Among a few others, the pack trains of Abraham Wood,
working out of Charleston, helped to supply the Westos with guns. He knew
a great deal about the southern Indians, most of which were tribes that were
remnants of the Cusabo chiefdom. None were strong enough to protect
themselves and they looked to the English, the Spaniards or the Westos for
protection. But Woodward felt that the Westos depended too much on
Virginia and, changing his alliances, he and other Carolinians resolved to
exterminate the Westos and install the Shawnees in their stead. (Ref. 267)

A group of Indian fighters called the "Goose Creek men" then emerged and
assumed more power in the colony. Most of them were originally from
Barbados, and at the end of the century one of them, James Moore, even
became governor. These men soon brought most of the southern aborigines
into their commercial orbit, at the expense of Spain, Virginia and later

France. The Creeks, Shawnees (Savannahs), Cherokees and Yamasees
usually could get cheaper guns, hardware and clothing from Carolinians
than from anyone else. Incited by the Goose Creek men, the natives overran
Spanish missions, burned chapels and sometimes the padres and carried off
booty. First to fall were the Guale missions and some of those in Timucua.
Timucuan, Guale and Yamasee Indians lived in those missions which in
1670 had stretched north from St. Augustine to the Savannah River.
Yamasees from both the coastal missions and the Chattahoochee, for
protection, began moving in large numbers closer to Charleston. Then the
Goose Creek men began to use the Yamasees to demolish missions in Guale
and Timucua. The booty included silver plate, ornaments, peltry, and
especially slaves, all of which the Carolinians exchanged for guns, powder,
hardware and textiles. Af ter white contact, the Indians relied less on
agriculture and hunted more, with young ones ranging hundreds of miles,
some even crossing the Mississippi River and covering more than 1,000
miles before returning home. (Ref. 267)

Carolina, established relatively late, nevertheless soon had an Indian slave
trade that overshadowed other mainland colonies. In late century these
normally came from the interior and were marched in large numbers to the
coast for sale to English purchasers. As in Africa, natives captured and sold
natives. Westos, Savannahs, Lower Creeks and Yamasees, among others,
raided remote towns and brought their prisoners to Charleston. Incidentally,
yellow fever killed 150 people in Charleston in 1698. (Ref. 267, 222)
Sometime during this century the London Company started a settlement in
what was to be South Carolina, which thrived on ambergris, a secretion
from the whale's intestine that was to be found floating on the sea. It was
used in perfumes. (Ref. 39)

EXTRA-COLONIAL AREAS OF THE UNITED STATES

THE SOUTHEAST

Spain began establishing her second great mission system in the province of
Apalachee after 1630, well after the founding of Jamestown. By the 1670s

some 20 smaller missions radiated from the principal one at San Luis
(Tallahassee) and a road connected that province with St. Augustine. Still
Spain's grasp on the area was weak and the garrisons averaged only 300 to
400 men and even these were not the flower of the Spanish army. They
were greatly outnumbered by the surrounding natives and, as we have noted
in the preceding section, these were of ten encouraged to attack by the
Carolinians. The priests did make many converts, however, and since the
cross had long been one of the symbols of the Southeastern Ceremonial
Complex, the padres reported that the Indians fervently came forward to
kiss the newly erected cross. Even as early as the preceding century
Franciscans had learned the tongue of the Timucuan and Apalachee and that
knowledge helped preserve much information about those peoples. Some
Timucuans and other natives were actually reading, writing and singing in
Castilian, as well as writing in their own language. But the missionaries
could also be cruel and they whipped Indians who missed Mass, forcing
them to be porters transporting goods some 200 miles from St. Augustine
without pay, among other penalties. It is no wonder that they could easily be
influenced to revolt. (Ref. 267)

Because of the fear of the French in Louisiana, Spain had a mission on the
Neches River in 1690 and later a garrison at Pensacola, Florida. Even so
Florida remained sparsely populated. There were droves of wild pigeons,
parrots and other birds, so that many boats came away loaded with birds
and their eggs. (Ref. 260)

THE MISSISSIPPI RIVER REGION AND LOUISIANA

The French explorer Jean Nicolet, who had lived among the Hurons since
Champlain's expedition of 1618, explored the Lake Michigan and
Wisconsin regions in 1634. (Ref. 222) Courcelles and Frontenac explored
farther in the Great Lakes regions in - 1671 which was about the same time
that Robert Cavelier de La Salle made some preliminary investigations
down in the headwaters of the Mississippi River. In the following year
Jacques Marquette explored the region around Chicago and a few years
later, with Father Louis Jolliet, went down the Mississippi to the Arkansas
tributary. (Ref. 131)

We noted above, in the section on Canada, that La Salle obtained some
permits from the French crown to continue studies of the Mississippi. He
and his party left Fort Frontenac (Kingston, Ontario) in the fall of 1678 and
after some backtracking, failure to get more funds from the French king and
other troubles, La Salle and his trusted aid De Tonty arrived at the Miamis
River in November, 1681 with a party of 23 Frenchmen, 18 savages,
Abenakis|[footnote], and Loups, 10 Indian women and 3 children. They
reached the Mississippi in February 1682 and on their course down river
first fell in with the Chickasaw Indians, who practiced the flattening of the
heads of their children. They reached the Gulf of Mexico on April 7, 1682
and formally took possession in the name of Louis XIV.

La Saile differentiated "savages" from Abenakis. The latter were also called
Abnakis and MicMacs, of the Algonquin group. Their apparent differences
from the other natives are of interest with respect to Fell's concepts
recorded on page 269.

Some of the adventures and hardships experienced by La Salle's company
on its trip down the Mississippi are best taken from La Salle's own
Memoirs, as translated in 1844 by Falconer (Ref. 63). La Salle wrote that he
undertook the trip to satisfy the wish of the late Monseigneur Colbert,
finance minister of France, of finding a port where the French might
establish themselves and harass the Spaniards in those regions from where
they derived all their wealth. He described the mouth of the Mississippi by
saying that the coast and the banks were overflowed for more than 20
leagues above the mouth, making it inaccessible by land. He told of an
assembly of more than 18,000 Indians of various nations, some of whom
had come from a distance of more than 2,000 leagues (probably 600 to 700
miles) to throw themselves "into his arms". Because these Indians had
already carried on war against the Spaniards, even without firearms, La
Salle felt that it would be possible to form an army of more than 15,000
savages who would follow him to attack the adjacent provinces where there
were not more than 400 native Spanish. He was apparently speaking of
New Bisca, the most northern province of Mexico. He strongly advised the
French crown to consider settling the Mississippi mouth region because "-
firstly, the service of God may be established there by the preaching of the
Gospel to numerous docile and settled nations--. They have already temples
and a form of worship." He added that provinces which might be seized

were very rich in silver mines; that the river itself was navigable for more
than a 100 leagues for ships and 500 leagues for barks and overall for more
than 800 miles from east to west.

Concerning the trip down the river, itself, the following information has
been taken from writings of both La Salle and the Cavalier Henry de Tonty,
as translated again by Falkoner. (Ref. 63) La Salle actually made 5 voyages
under extraordinary hardships, extending over more than 5,000 leagues,
most commonly on foot, through snow and water, almost without rest over
5 years. He traversed more than 600 leagues of unknown country among
many barbarous and cannibalistic nations, against whom he was obliged to
fight almost daily, although he was accompanied by only 38 men. Many of
the various tribes he encountered lived in settled villages consisting of
hundreds of cabins, of ten made of mud, with cane mats. In one such village
the cabin of the chief was 40 feet square, the walls 10 feet high and 1 foot
thick, with a 15 feet high, dome-shaped roof. The chief was seated on a
camp bed with 3 of his wives and more than 60 old men, clothed in large
white cloaks of mulberry bark were present. Sieur de Tonty was told that
when the chief dies, his youngest wife, his house-steward and 100 men
accompany him into the other world. In one village of the Natchez, there
were more than 300 warriors. De Tonty contrasts these lower Mississippi
people with those in IIlinois- who lived in some of the finest lands he had
ever seen. He said the Illinois Indians were brave but extremely lazy, except
in war, when they think nothing of seeking their enemies at a distance of
600 leagues. Polygamy prevailed there also.

Finally La Salle's application to form a colony on the south of the
Mississippi was authorized and this time he approached from the sea in the
summer of 1684, with 4 vessels. Unfortunately, after passing Cuba they
inadvertently missed the river and finally landed in what appears to have
been Matagora Bay. La Salle built a fort there, left 130 men to man it and
then left in March, 1685 with another 50 men to find the Mississippi. Still
not locating his goal, he built another fort on a river he named "Vaches" and
abandoning the first fort, 70 men, women and children moved to this new
place. But 30 of his company had died and the master carpenter had been
lost. Still this second fort had more people than the colony of Smith of
Virginia or of those who embarked in the Mayflower. This was the

settlement on which France based claims that Texas was a part of
Louisiana.

While La Salle's ship Belle sailed along the coast with his papers and
equipment, he took 20 men and started overland, still seeking the
Mississippi delta. He returned in 4 months but the Belle had apparently
been lost. The leader then selected 20 men to accompany him back to
Canada overland, leaving the fort on April 22, 1686. He became ill on the
Trinity River, however, and had to return to Vaches. There then remained
about 40 of the original 180 people, who had landed in Texas. La Salle
again started north in January of 1687 only to be assassinated along with
some of his most faithful followers, by a group of 4 disgruntled Frenchmen,
at Navasoto, Texas. A few of the party eventually reached St. Louis, where
De Tonty was found. In the spring of 1686 he had sailed down the
Mississippi and, reaching the sea, had sent canoes east and west, vainly
seeking his old companion and friend. The few survivors left in Texas from
La Salle's expedition were subsequently either captured by Indians or by
Spaniards, and taken to Mexico. (Ref. 63, 39)

The failure of this expedition did not deter the French government in its
pursuit of Gulf settlement. In 1697 the Canadian D'lberville sailed down the
Mississippi and with other voyages planted a colony which he left in charge
of his brother Bienville. The brave and generous De Tonty joined
D'lberville at the mouth of the Mississippi about the year 1700. (Ref. 63)
This was at about the same time that Cadillac was founding a fort at Detroit
in the north.

THE SOUTHWEST

Governor Don Juan de Onate set up the first Spanish government in the
southwest at Santa Fe, 10 years before the Pilgrims landed in
Massachusetts. For the next 200 years Spanish outposts in Arizona, Texas,
California and New Mexico slowly developed an economy. The Spanish
introduced 2 indispensable elements in the life of western America - the
horse and the cow. The horse, originally terrifying the Indians, eventually
set them free from Mexico to the Canadian tundra. The Spanish also left the

whole heraldry of ranching in the language - corral, mesa, arroya, patio,
adobe, mustang, sombrero, desperado, poncho, alfalfa, bronco, lariat and
others. (Ref. 39) By 1630 there were 1,000 people in Santa Fe and the
immediate area, including 250 garrisoned soldiers. There were 50 friars
distributed in 90 villages, each with their own church.

Trouble between civil and church authorities was not long in appearing. By
1680 the population in the area had increased to 2,800 and there were towns
at Pecos, Taos, Santa Cruz, San Marcos, etc. but all were evacuated when
an Indian revolt of Zuni, Hopi, Tano and Keres Indians, under Pope’,
revolted. Some 2,000 refugees reached El Paso. Pope’ made himself
governor, but his bad reign and a long drought led to disarray, allowing
recapture of this area of present day New Mexico and western Texas by
Diego de Vargas rather easily in 1692. (Ref. 198, 83)

Alonso de Leon had established a mission at San Francisco de los Tejas,
near the Neches River in 1690, but it was abandoned in 1693. (Ref. 198)
Father Eusebio Kino visited the Pima Indians on the Gila River in southern
Arizona in 1697 and, finding them friendly, he established a mission near
present day Tucson, in 1700. The Pima were experts with bow and arrow
and had war clubs and rawhide shields. (Ref. 38)

THE FAR WEST

The Great Plains and the far west were certainly moderately populated with
many and varied Indian tribes in this century, but in the absence of contact
with whites little accurate information is available. The reader is referred to
the 18th and 19th centuries.

MEXICO, CENTRAL AMERICA, AND THE CARIBBEAN

Already Mexican Society was divided into several classes based chiefly on
race and color. First there were the Indians, living primarily in their villages
under the rule of the caciques, with their numbers greatly dwindled. The
second class was the Creoles, a white population born in Mexico and
descendants of the conquistadores. Next were the Mestizos, who were half -

breeds, half Indian and half white and finally the Gachupines, natives of
Spain sent over for administration. Instead of being incorporated into
Spanish civilization the Indians regarded all white men as their enemies and
the Creole landowners encroached on the Indian villages' land. Government
attempts to protect the Indians were foiled by corrupt officials and Indian
ignorance of the law. (Ref. 167) The few remaining primitive Chichimec
Indians of the north Mexican desert were still being hunted and run to earth
"like wild animals". (Ref. 260)

The decay of the Spanish Empire in Europe did not enable the Creoles to
usurp powers of self-government, however, because they were themselves
victims of the Gachupin bureaucracy. This bureaucracy tapped the wealth
produced by the labor of the native population. On the surface all was
peace, passivity and decay, but explosive forces were slowly developing.
Communications remained primitive; there were no roads; and Mexican
industry was suppressed in part because of jealousy of the Spanish
merchants. Mexico was unable to develop any native commercial class.

The drop in the Indian population of Mexico in just 5 or 6 generations was
almost unbelievable although the exact figures are still being debated.
Tannahill (Ref. 211) says that by 1605 central Mexico had only 1,075,000
people, down from 25,000,000 at the time of Cortez and that the decrease
was due to war, economic upheaval, exploitation and new diseases,
representing one of the most comprehensive human catastrophes of the
world. The deliberate encouragement of alcohol in the forms of pulque and
mezcal among the Indians must also have been a deteriorating factor. State
revenue from pulque in New Spain was equal to one-half the revenue from
the silver mines. (Ref. 260) William McNeill (Ref. 140) writes that the
entire population of Mexico was, at 1,600,000 in 1620, a 90% drop with
drastic psychological and cultural consequences. Faith in established
institutions and belief s cannot withstand such disaster and skills and
knowledge disappear. Thus, it was easy for the Spaniards to transfer their
language and culture to the New World.

Masses of goods were shipped from Seville to Central - America and the
responsible merchants expected to be paid in silver bullion. In 1637 there
were allegedly heaps of silver wedges lying in the street in Porto Belo,

Panama. Most of this, of course, had been brought up from the Potosi mines
of South America. (Ref. 292) The silver was landed at the port of Panama
and then moved by mules and boats (on the Chagres River) across the
isthmus to Porto Belo on the Caribbean. But the muleteers and boatmen had
to be fed maize, which itself was imported from Nicaragua or Chile. The
year 1626 was a barren year and 100 to 150 tons of maize had to be
obtained from Peru to keep the silver going. (Ref. 260) The Welch
buccaneer, Henry Morgan, captured Panama City in a treaty violation with
Spain, but although at first put on trial, he eventually was made Lt.
Governor of Jamaica and put in charge of ending piracy. (Ref. 222) In 1695
the Spanish started to build a road from Campeche to Guatemala and
encountered many ancient buildings on deserted, overgrown terraces, the
remnants of the previous Indian civilizations. (Ref. 205) Yucatec-speaking
Indians, fleeing disease and general disruption, went from the rain forests of
Guatemala, with their bows and arrows into the region of Chiapas, Mexico,
where they were subsequently known as the "Lacandon Maya". (Ref. 283)

The society of New Spain was dominated by the clerical heirarchy. Beneath
an archbishop were 8 other bishops and members of the Inquisition. The
Indians became Catholics while still remaining pagan; the clergy rapidly
became degenerate, while growing richer. The ideal of the New World
Church - or at least that of many of its clergy - was a despotic government,
a privileged priesthood and an ignorant laity. (Ref. 166)

Every European major power was interested in the "sugar islands" of the
Caribbean and there were many possessions and trading of island territories
between Spain, France, England and Holland. (Ref. 8) The Dutch had
brought the cane from Brazil when they were expelled from Recife in 1654
and it soon reached Martinique, Guadeloupe, Dutch Curacao, Jamaica and
Santo Domingo. After 1685 production showed an uninterrupted increase
and this sugar production required a tremendous labor force, this resulting
in the black slave importation. But cane left little space for food crops and
edibles had to be imported from Europe or North America. The same could
be said about the lack of skilled craftsmen and engineers| footnote]. Even
nails and boilers for the sugar mills had to be brought from Europe. (Ref.
260, 292)

These were also lacking in colonial America. (Ref. 292)

England established colonies on Bermuda in 1612, Barbados in 1627, and
Jamaica in 1655. By 1676 some 400 ships, each carrying about 180 tons of
sugar, left Jamaica.

By 1690 there were an estimated 40,000 slaves on that island, working the
sugar estates and their revolts and desertions resulted in almost continuous
military action throughout the last decades of this century. (Ref. 249) The
British from Bermuda began settling the Bahamas in mid-century but were
subject to pirate raids by Spanish and French and they did not establish real
sovereignty until late in the next century. (Ref. 274) It was not until 1680
that sugar spread to the western half of the island of St. Domingue, which
had been French until the middle of the century.

By this century the Caribbean Taino Indians were extinct and the African
slaves took the places of these vanishing Americans, perhaps in part
because they were resistant to malaria. This disease arrived in the Gulf area
after 1650, with the imported Africans. The first epidemic of yellow fever
occurred in Guadeloupe and St. Kitts in 1635 and in Yucatan and Havana in
1648 after the Aedes Aegypti mosquito had voyaged over on ships from
Africa. As a result of these diseases even the whites decreased in numbers
or disappeared as the blacks increased. (Ref. 150, 140) Overall perhaps as
many as 340,000 black slaves were brought from Africa in this century
alone. (Ref. 213, 160) Settlement in these West Indies was for a long time
more extensive than on the American mainland, however, and by 1700 there
were 121,000 inhabitants in this area.

SOUTH AMERICA

NORTHERN AND WESTERN SOUTH AMERICA

Even at the beginning of this 17th century the Spanish were continuing to
search for "Eldorado, the Land of Gold", but up to the early decades, except
for a few nuggets of gold, a fairly good supply of emeralds and some
cinnamon, there was little to show for the century of exploration. The entire
west coast of the continent had been explored, however, and the foundations
had been laid for every one of the 20 republics of Central and South
America, excepting Argentina. In one generation the Spaniards had

acquired more territory than Rome conquered in 5 centuries-and the
Spaniards organized and administered all that they conquered. (Ref. 151)
The Spanish New World was first divided into two great viceroyalties of
Nueva Espana (Mexico) and Peru, to which La Plata (Argentina and Chile)
and Nueva Granada (Columbia and Venezuela) were later added.
Portuguese traders had infiltrated all of Spanish America. Even in a town
like Santiago, Chile, with 10,000 people, one could find a Portuguese
merchant. They often also doubled as bankers and occasionally, as in Potosi
in 1634, public opinion accused them of being "new Christians" or even
Jews and subsequent Inquisition trials put an end to their property. (Ref.
292)

By 1650 Potosi, in Bolivia, was the largest city in South America, with
160,000 people, with Indian peasants forced to work in the great silver
mines under extreme hardship conditions. (Ref. 175) The South American
Indians felt that they could not work or go on trips without chewing the
coca leaf mixed with ground lime. Containing cocaine, this half-stimulant
and half-narcotic does deaden fatigue, pain, and hunger and facilitates
breathing at high altitudes. The terrible effects of widespread use of the
purified drug, however, are now becoming all too obvious in the United
States. (Ref. 211) It is not well known, but statistics from the archives of the
Peruvian viceroyalty show that at least 300,000 Africans were brought into
Peru in this century. By that time the number of native Indians had fallen to
700,000 so one may judge the impact of this importation of blacks. The
lowlands of Ecuador and Colombia had also been Africanized to an
unknown degree. In the highlands of the Andes, however, any African traits
are ancient and from tropical Asiatic (Melanesian or Australoid) fringes or
even of ancient Atlantic crossings by Africans.

EASTERN AND CENTRAL SOUTH AMERICA

Only in this century did the Portuguese finally win tremendous areas in the
New World. Economic and political power was concentrated in the hands of
great plantation owners in Brazil. By 1623 there were 350 sugar plantations
in that country and 25 years later there were 150,000 to 200,000 civilized
people, with 3/4 being Indian, Negroes or "Mixed". The state of Maranhao

was created and Jesuit missions were established along the Amazon. In
1635 the Dutch invaded and occupied the whole northern part of Brazil and
a little later they wrested the whole Gold Coast from Portugal. They were
thrown out in 1654, but in the meantime, the locals had learned a great deal
about sugar production from the Dutch. At the end of the century slaving
operations in the interior of Brazil were being resisted by the Jesuits, who
tried to protect the Indians.

Gold was found in 1690 in the central region of Minas Gerais, today one of
the richest states in Brazil. A few years later diamonds were also found in
the same region. (Ref. 175) As in Central America, malaria arrived with the
African Negro and yellow fever came only slightly later. (Ref. 140, 222,
134)

In central South America, east of the Andes, and in the more temperate
southern zone were wide open lands suitable for sheep and cattle breeders.
The original Gauchos, who were mixed Spanish and Indian and almost
entirely lawless, preyed on those cattle, simulating in many respects the old
nomads of central Asia of a thousand years earlier. (Ref. 211) Since
indigenous animals were few in what later became Argentina, the empty
countryside was soon filled with European horses and cattle, which banded
in wild herds across the great pampas and so existed until the 1 9th century.
The Indians had some of those horses, too, so that the natives of Argentina
and particularly the Araucanians of Chile continued to be tough adversaries
for another two centuries. (Ref. 260)

Paraguay was founded by Jesuits in 1608. (Ref. 222) It is of some interest
that the first Europeans to sail around Cape Horn, instead of through the
Strait of Magellan, were the Dutchmen Willem Corneliszoon Schouten and
Jacob Le Maire and the cape was named after the former's birthplace,
Hoorn. They were en route to Indonesia in 1615. (Ref. 134)

Forward to America: A.D. 1701 to 1800
Choose Different Region

1. Intro to Era
2. Africa
3. Central and Northern Asia

6. The Indian Subcontinent
7. The Near East
8. Pacific

America: A.D. 1701 to 1800

AMERICA

Back to America: A.D. 1601 to 1700

NORTH AMERICA

CANADA AND THE FAR NORTH

When Vitus Bering found the strait which bears his name he also explored
the Aleutian chain of islands and the Alaska shores, living on sea otters and
starting a new fur trade. By 1745 ruthless Russian hunters were established
on Attu Island, where they killed all male Aleuts and took their women.
Later, however, they found that they had to keep Aleut males to help them
hunt the otters in their ulluxtadags (similar to Eskimo kayaks) with
harpoons and they then merged and lived together with the Aleuts. In 1784
Grigorii Shelekhov established a settlement on Kodiak Island and founded
what became the Russian-American Company. They obtained otter and seal
pelts, using 7,200 Aleuts to hunt full-time and taking 300 others as hostages
to ensure work from the first group. This broke up the Aleut families and
then disease appeared, so that in the two generations at the end of the
century, the Aleut population fell by nearly two-thirds. (Ref. 234, 199)
Shelekhov was followed by Alexander Baranov, who greeted British ships
and found English, American and even a few Spanish skippers had been
trading for furs some 1,100 miles south. In 1799 he sailed along the shore
with 450 two-man kayaks to establish a colony on Baranov Island, just 6
miles above a Tlingits Indian stronghold at what is now Sitka, Alaska.
Those Tlingits had inhabited the lower coastal area of the Alaskan
panhandle for a long period and had a high culture, living in gabled lodges
housing a dozen families and producing canoes holding 60 men. One of
their better known features were their 50 feet tall totem poles. North of the
Tlingits were the Eskimoes along the Arctic shoreline living, as the Aleuts
on the islands, by hunting chiefly seals and walruses. In central Alaska were

the Athabascan Indians, bearing no cultural resemblance to the coastal
people. They are linguistic cousins of the Apaches and Navajos and lived in
small nomadic bands in bare simplicity, existing chiefly on the caribou.
They did create the snow-shoe to facilitate getting about in deep snow. (Ref.
234) Additional Notes

By 1745 when the Russians were already well established in the Aleutians,
the English had only a handful of isolated trading posts west of Hudson
Bay. (Ref. 8) On the west coast of Canada, Don Juan Francisco de la
Bodega sailed the "Sonora" beyond the 56th degree latitude and examined
the coast belonging to Russia,- which is now the upper of British Columbia.
Then in 1778 while Captain Cook was sailing up the coast to reach the
Aleutians, he incidentally discovered Nootka sound on Vancouver Island.
Spanish historians claim, however, that Juan Perez had discovered this
sound previously in 1774.

On the Atlantic side, in 1711 Britain attempted to take French Quebec and
Canada, by sending seven regiments of Marlborough's best, along with
1,500 colonials into the St. Lawrence. Ten of their ships were sunk and the
expedition f ailed. The war in Europe ended 2 years later, however, and
France's position in southeastern Canada was greatly weakened by the
Treaty of Utrecht, which terminated the War of the Spanish Succession, or
Queen Anne's war, as it was called in America. (Ref. 222) France lost
Newfoundland,

Nova Scotia and the Hudson Bay area to England and Canada as a whole
was impoverished.

While thousands of sturdy Germans, French, Protestant Scots, etc., were
pouring into the English colonies, the government of Louis XV allowed
only a mere trickle to go to Canada. The population of Canada in 1713 was
only 18,119, although this had doubled by 1734. In the 30 years after 1713
the French spent $6,000,000 in gold building a fortress on Cape Breton
Island, which menaced English fisheries, but was useless in war time. They
also built forts on Lake Champlain, at Niagara Falls and two on the
Wabash. In 1744 the War of Jenkins' Ear with Spain merged into the War of
the Austrian Succession (King George's War in America) in which England
and Austria were allies against France and Prussia. The French and their

Indian allies raided New England and the Iroquois raided Canada. The
Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle ended that war, with France retaining the
Louisburg fort on Cape Breton Island. In mid-century the English settlers in
Nova Scotia fought with the local French Acadians and the latter were
deported in mass some 6,000 to 7 ,000 strong. Some ended up in Louisiana
to became the "Cajuns". (Ref. 68)

The Seven Years War in Europe spilled over into the f inal French and
Indian War in America (1755-1763) and the Peace of Paris signed the death
knoll for France in America. (Ref. 119) Quebec had fallen in 1759 and
Montreal in 1760. (Ref. 8) The French people in southern Canada, however,
continued a self-consciousness and intolerance, with their grievances
carrying on to the present time. This was in spite of the fact that the British
government, by the Quebec Act of 1774 guaranteed the French settlers free
exercise of their religion, language and law (Old French civil law), as well
as expanding the boundaries of the new Canadian colony to the Mississippi
and Ohio rivers. This, incidentally, was interpreted as harmful to Virginia
and Pennsylvania and was one factor, along with the Coercive Acts, in
lighting the fuse for revolution in the lower thirteen colonies. (Ref. 8)
Actually the British were not overjoyed with their conquest and tried to
trade Canada back to the French, soon, in exchange for the island of
Guadeloupe. *** (Page 1201)

Map taken from Reference 97.

The Canadian northwest was opened by Scottish merchants in slender
canoes and by the French voyageurs. The fur trade reached its zenith in the
1790s. Montreal was the chief supply center with great loads of supplies
leaving in flotillas of 30 some canoes, each 40 feet long and carrying 8 to
10 voyageurs. They would travel 1,600 miles, up the Ottowa River, then
down the French River into Georgian Bay and the North Channel of Lake
Huron, across Sault Ste. Marie into Lake Superior, then across the Grand
Portage to the Pigeon River. In the western part of the route the canoes were
a little shorter, at 25 feet, but they still carried 6 to 8 men and 1 ~ tons of
cargo, while drawing only 18 inches of water. These northmen were French
or mixed French-Indian and were small, not over 5'5" in height. They

traveled on smooth water at 4 miles per hour, sometimes for 16 hours a day.
Sled dogs and Indian wives completed their necessities. (Ref. 212)

In 1791 Parliament passed the Canada Act, dividing the region into Upper
and Lower Canada, this roughly corresponding to English and French areas,
respectively. For a quarter of a century there was peace. The Canadian
Pacific coast had been ~ailed in the 1780s and in 1792 Captain George
Vancouver explored and surveyed the region now bearing his name.
Alexander Mackenzie went overland to the Pacific in 1793 as the first
European to cross this continent, coast to coast. His route was by canoe
west from Lake Athabasca, up the Pease River, portage across the Rockies
to the Parsnip, then the Fraser, Blackwater and Bella Coola rivers, in turn,
to the Pacific. (Ref. 212) He used Pemmican (Cree name for "fat") as part
of his food supply. This was made by drying thin-sliced, lean meat over a
fire, then pounding it to shreds and mixing it with an almost equal amount
of melted fat, along with some marrow and a few handfuls of wild cherries
(later currants or sugar were used), after which it was packed in rawhide
sacks tightly sewed and sealed with tallow. This food supplied adequate
calories for survival. An additional travel food was a dried corn meal
pancake called "Johnnycake". (Ref. 211) By 1800 trappers and traders had
crisscrossed the continent many times. (Ref. 68)

At the last of the century Spain was at war with Great Britain and in 1789
the Spanish Captain Martinez siezed 4 British ships in Nootka sound. This
started a year's dispute terminated by a convention of October, 1790 in
which it was agreed that all had a right to navigating and fishing in the
Pacific and of making settlements there, but the British should not do so
within 10 leagues of any coastal area already occupied by Spain.

Because of the warm Japan Current, much of the Canadian western coast
land (and adjacent islands) is warm, with great forests and rivers teeming
with salmon. The Haida, Kwakiutl and Bella Coola Indians lived too easily
there and had so much leisure time that they could create great native
civilizations, with a culture expressed in wood-working, including
magnificently carved totem poles, some SO feet high and lodges as large as
3,000 square feet. They had sea-gray canoes holding 50 men. (Ref. 212)
(See pages 269,374 and 568)

Meanwhile in the far eastern North American region, Danish missionaries
and traders had brought fabrics, implements and some new foods to the
Greenland Eskimos. Although the latter kept their old customs of using
kayaks and harpoons for seal hunts, they now used guns for killing caribou.
They lived in communal houses of stone and turf. (Ref. 288)

THE UNITED STATES

AREA OF ORIGINAL 13 COLONIES (AND FLORIDA)

The eastern colonies had 250,000 people at the beginning of this century.
By 1750, including the 100,000 Negro slaves, the colonies were almost
one-third as populous as England itself. (Ref. 8) By 1776 the population
had increased to about 2 1/2 million. Patterns of migration changed during
the century, with Scotch, Welch, Irish, Germans and Dutch arriving in ever
increasing numbers. Some Scandinavians, Swiss, Belgians and French
signed terms of indenture by the thousands in order to get to America. The
mixture by 1763 has been estimated at 50% English, 18% Scotch and
Scotch-Irish, 18% African, 6% German and 3% Dutch, thus already a
"melting pot". (Ref. 68) Europe had no need for food products from the
colonies, such as grain, meat and butter so these things were sold to the
Caribbean and the bills of exchange so obtained were used for purchasing
manufactured items from the British Isles. It was different with tobacco and
even by 1723 some 200 ships carried 30,000 kegs a year to England, where
it was re-exported to northern Europe. (Ref. 260) Gradually a few other
products were shipped directly across the Atlantic. Just before the American
Revolution, South Carolina sent more than a million pounds of indigo to
England. (Ref. 39)

By 1733 there were 13 colonies but each had its own government, currency,
trade laws and religious ways, so that they were actually like 13 nations.
The middle colonies produced the most flexible societies, giving birth to the
first real cities, with business men and ports and trades and yet were
basically agrarian. The plantar society of the south was a fluid aristocracy,
open to labor and talent, while New England was controlled by a Puritan

oligarchy. (Ref. 39) New colleges were built at Princeton[ footnote] and
what are now known as Columbia and University of Pennsylvania. The first
American newspaper was published in Boston in April, 1704. (Ref. 218)
New York state was hampered in land expansion because of the Iroquois
Confederacy land and it was only in 6th place in population as late as 1760.
Boston ladies imitated the manners of the court of King James and all
colonials were concerned with social status. Virginia society became
stabilized with brave gallants, fair women, horse races and fox hunting.
There was no middle class there because if one was white he was either of
first family or a frontiersman. The colonies had rum distilleries, using
molasses from the Indies and there was an iron industry in Virginia, in spite
of English laws forbidding this, in 1750. By 1775 there were more furnaces
and forges in the colonies than in England and Wales together. A most
serious handicap was the English restriction on colonial use of money,
forbidding the export of English coin to the colonies and prohibiting any
local mint coinage. As a result the locals used Spanish milled dollars, or
"pieces of eight", and paper money and bills of credit. In every colony south
of Maryland, Negro slaves outnumbered white servants by 1720 and the
proportion of blacks continued to increase. In Virginia in 1756 there were
120,156 Negroes out of a total population of 293,474. There were some
slave insurrections, the chief one being the Cato Conspiracy in 1739. (Ref.
151)

This college was originally at Newark under Presbyterian auspices and was
moved to Princeton in 1756. (Ref. 222)

As an American aspect of the War of the Spanish Succession at the
beginning of the century, fighting developed between Carolinians and their
Chickasaw allies against the Spanish in Pensacola, and locally this was
called "Queen Anne's War". The Goose Creek men that we met in the last
chapter continued their mischief in the 18th century. In 1704 the Barbadian,
James Moore, and 50 Goose Creek men led 1,000 Creeks, Yamasees and
Apalachicolas against the province of Apalachee. Missions and Franciscans
alike were burned and Moore returned to Carolina boasting of having 4,000
women and children as slaves and an additional 1,300 who voluntarily
joined with him. In addition, he killed or enslaved 325 men, not including
the captives taken by his Indian allies. Perhaps 200 Apalachees escaped and
f led westward to Mobile, where French padres put them in new missions

and a few sought refuge near St. Augustine. Moore and his Creeks and
Yamasees charged on into Florida, ravaging Timucuans, burning their
towns, plundering livestock and taking captives. Pensacola, 500 miles south
of Charleston, suffered a similar fate and even the Keys were attacked by
the Indians in canoes. Unable to protect them because of involvement in
Queen Anne's War, Spain shipped hundreds of the Florida Indians,
including the remnants of the Calusas and Tequetas, Apalachees, Guales
and Timucuans, to Cuba. (Ref. 267)

In the meantime Carolina had some Indian troubles of its own. The
Tuscaroras, of Iroquoian stock, occupied much of North Carolina's
Tidewater and they had been traditional enemies of the Algonquian tribes.
Probably because white colonists were allying themselves with the latter,
the Tuscarora suddenly turned on the whites in 1711. For 2 years full scale
war raged with the Tuscarora fighting both the colonists and some of the
Algonquian tribes, who were supplied by Virginia and North and South
Carolina authorities. Finally some 1,000 Tuscaroras were taken captive and
sold. In 19714 a still more destructive war erupted, one somewhat
erroneously called "the Yamasee War". Actually there were many natives in
addition to the Yamasee, including Lower Creeks, Guales, Apalachees,
Savannahs, Cherokees, Yuchis, Cheraws, Catawbas, Waterees and
Waccamaws who attacked the whites. Some played greater roles than
others. Many of these tribes were components of the old Chiefdom of
Cofitachiqui and in a way this was the native response to the commercial
empire of the Goose Creek men. Losses on both sides were high - 400
colonists perished, some 6% of the white population. On the Indian side,
many of the participating tribes simply became extinct. Port Royal
remained deserted for years. Generally disorganized, the colonists revolted
against proprietary rule in 1719 and claimed South Carolina a royal colony.

Even before their war on the colonists in 1711 the Tuscaroras were the most
powerful nation in the North Carolina Tidewater and for years they had
fallen on their weaker neighbors and sold captives to the Virginians and
North Carolinians. Slave raids, wars and especially diseases eventually
Swept away almost all Timucuans, Appalachees, Tequestas and eventually
even the Yamasees. Some Lower Creeks remained in Florida, destroying
and mixing with aboriginal remnants of other tribes and by the latter third

of the 18th century - these Indians became known as Seminoles. The Creek
Chief Cowkeeper, who settled in the Gainesville region, according to some,
is the progenitor of the Seminole nation. (Ref. 267) (See also page 1015)

Europeans customarily branded slaves and this was carried on in the United
States. In 1716 commissioners in charge of the Carolina Indian trade sent
branding irons to agents in the back country to mark deerskins and captives,
alike. The latter were marked on the face, shoulder or arm. Through this
18th century tens of thousands of southern Indians were enslaved and most
of these were women and children. Indians worked for whites as wage
laborers, tilling fields, rounding up cattle and as domestics, hunters and
artisans. pamunkey women worked as maids. Many female Indian servants
murdered their offspring, either to escape a whipping, an increased period
of service or perhaps just to keep their children from growing up in an alien
world. The men sometimes carried peltry for 200 or even 500 miles for the
Goose Creek men. In excellent physical condition, some of these Indian
men impressed the colonists by keeping up with a man on horseback for 10
or 20 miles, apparently without fatigue. They learned new occupations such
as serving on board oceangoing vessels and learning to care for and ride
horses. Each village was apt to have a resident factor, an Englishman or
more likely a Scot, but some factors were Indians, mestizos or occasionally
blacks. The natives' appetite for trading goods and drink exceeded their
ability to pay and they were frequently in debt. (Ref. 267)

At the beginning of the century Anglicans redoubled their efforts to send
missionaries among the Indians to learn their languages and establish
schools. The Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts
(SPG) was founded for that purpose in 1701. The Archbishop of Canterbury
was a founder and colonial governors and commissaries were members, as
were laymen on both sides of the Atlantic. Inevitably there developed a
close association between SPG and English imperialism. There was little
distinction between extending the flag and spreading the faith. A search was
made to find a lingua franca which could be comprehended by most
southern Indians. An Algonquian tongue spoken by the Savannahs
(Shawnees) was considered, but the Muskhogean Yamasee was better as it
could be understood throughout much of the south as a second, if not a first
language. Schools were established, including one in connection with

William and Mary College, but there were never many in attendance and
little was really accomplished. In the long run the SPG was most successful
with Mohawks in upper New York, where missionaries did conduct services
in the Mohawk language. We have mentioned the Yamasee rebellion in the
latter half of the century, after which those Indians were implacable enemies
of the British as long as any of them survived. The SPG was shocked. (Ref.
267)

After 1715 the two largest Indian tribes adjacent to South Carolina were the
Creeks and Cherokees and there was some attempt to Christianize them. A
German, Christian Priber, a versatile scholar and lawyer conversant in
several languages, went to live among them, dressed as a native, learned
their language and tried to establish a socialist community on the frontier.
He educated the Indians, explaining how traders' scales, weights and
measures worked so that the British colonists assumed he was a French
agent trying to turn the natives against them. They sought him out and
imprisoned him.

Except for the Floridas, which Britain acquired in 1763 and held for 20
years, Georgia was the last southern colony, founded in 1733, more than 60
years after the birth of Charleston. After 10 years of Trustee rule, Georgia's
white population was at most 3,000, but on the eve of the Revolution,
Georgia contained 18,000 free whites and almost as many slaves. The
original trustees did have ideals,- however, including the prohibition of
drinking, the outlawing of Negro slavery and some restriction on the size of
land holdings. This did not keep the Georgians from using Indian slaves,
however, and by 1750 the trustees legalized all types of slavery. James
Oglethorpe was the only trustee who actually went to Georgia and he
appointed Charles Wesley his secretary for Indian affairs and John Wesley
as an ordained missionary of the SPG. John decided to go into the
Chickasaw country to learn their language and customs, but various
complications kept him from accomplishing that and his ministry was not
successful. Oglethorpe persuaded the Yamacraw chief, his wife, nephew
and a handful of others to return with him to England in 1734, where the
Reverend Samuel Smith instructed them in the Creed, the Lord's Prayer and
the Commandments. This was about the extent of the Georgia conversion.

We shall return to the traditional history of the American colonies, the
problems in the "Old Northwest", the French and Indians War and finally
the American Revolution at a later time, but feeling that school texts have
overlooked much material about the southern Indians and their relationships
with the whites and imported Africans, we shall devote a few additional
paragraphs to these subjects. At times the Indians cooperated with the
British, as when Creeks, Yamacraws and Cherokees helped Oglethorpe in
battles with Spanish troops, who attacked St. Simons Island in 1742.
Natives crewed the scout boats used for communications along the chain of
sea island forts and they raided Florida, killing or capturing unwary
Spaniards, Yamasees and Negroes. At other times the Indians fought the
colonists, but in between there was considerable merging of red, white and
black races.

In this 18th century Creeks constituted one of the largest racially
heterogeneous tribes. Other more or less "pure-bred" tribes, such as the
Catawbas, had existed, but now there were only a few hundred of them left
and the Catawba language had been lost. Various Catawbas conversed in
assorted tongues belonging to several different language families. The first
mention of the term "Seminole" was in 1771 and it was probably taken
from the Spanish cimarron (wild) which became simanoli in Chickasaw.
Lower and then Upper Creeks drifting into Florida formed the nucleus of
the Seminole "nation", with a few remnants from earlier days - Calusas and
Tequestas. (See also page 1013). There never was a unified Seminole nation
and those Indians then, as today, did not necessarily understand one another.
The Lumbees of southeastern North Carolina offer an even more bizarre
grouping. Numbering still some 40,000 today, they constitute one of the
largest tribes in the United States, but actually they are an aggregation of
diverse remnant tribes and also blacks and whites, having geography more
than anything else in common. There is no Lumbee language.

It is thus apparent that the mixtures that developed among the southern
Indians was not entirely one of intermingled tribes, as the whites mixed
with the natives on a much grander scale than some care to admit. A
considerable numb er of colonists married Indians and reared families and
then, of course, the packhorsemen and factors, living for extended periods
among the Indians, formed unions with native women. Many of the tribes

had cultures which condoned premarital sex for the young Indian girls.
Such a large mestizo population emerged that great numbers of 18th
century "Indian" chiefs had such names as McDonald, Perryman, Colbert,
Brown, etc. It wasn't long before the natives and the whites and mestizos
living among them began to insist that they owned their lands outright and
that in every respect they inhabited a sovereign, independent nation.
Attempts were made to reestablish centralized states, yet no chief spoke for
a unified Cherokee or Creek nation and colonists repeatedly took advantage
of this to obtain lands. Many of the tribes were ethnic melting pots. The
terms Creek and Muskhogee did not even appear until this century. Creek or
Muskhogee, the primary language, in all probability was not a first
language or perhaps even understood by a majority of the Creeks. Lower
Creeks, a major part of the confederation, themselves composed of different
ethnic groups, for the most part spoke Hitchiti, which was unintelligible to
those speaking Creek proper.

At any time, in the last century or through this one, whenever whites
destroyed Indian granaries and cut down their corn, the effect was
devastating. Survivors fled to the woods, where many starved, as they were
not as at home in the woods as their hunting and gathering ancestors had
been. The Cherokee Chief Vann was driven from his village during the
revolution and was forced to scratch for subsistence in the wild. All of these
Indians were basically agriculturists. Although small amounts of wheat and
rice were grown, maize remained the staple and was prepared as cornbread
and hominy, or after being boiled with oak and hickory ashes, was drunk as
a kind of soup, which the Creeks called sof kee. Late in the century sweet
potatoes were developed. Fields were fenced and cattle, horses, sheep,
goats, hogs and chickens were available. The Upper Creek Chief Wolf
owned 200 head of black cattle and Indians in other villages had even larger
herds. A few years after the Revolution, William Augustus Bowles brought
a large supply of munitions and presents for the Creeks from the Bahamas,
but they had to come to the coast to get them. They had no difficulty in
assembling more than 100 pack horses outfitted with saddles and halters
had led them nearly 400 miles overland to pick up the goods. Of course,
horse stealing became as prominent as raising, buying and selling. (Ref.
267)

Although scalping was a long time custom among Indians, the usage
increased after white contact and was more prevalent around the time of the
American Revolution than ever. Mississippians were not true cannibals, but
for ritualistic purposes at times did eat human flesh. Like the Indians,
British colonists also drank yaupon tea and some was even exported to
Britain and France. Europeans took over a great many Indian medicines and
cures and a considerable portion of southern white and African folk
medicine is of aboriginal origin. The Indians were also the source of many
new words such as moccasin, matchcoat, terrapin, opossum, raccoon,
chinquapin, chum, hominy, pone and tomahawk. The terms for racial
hybrids have been confusing. A 1705 Virginia statute says that a mulatto is
the offspring of whites and non-whites, that is - the child of an Indian and a
white, or the child, grandchild or great-grandchild of a Negro and a white.
A South Carolina missionary in 1715 baptized as a mulatto a girl whose
mother he reported as an Indian and father as a white trader. At other times
"mulatto" seemed to mean Negro-Indian mixture, but finally the term
zambo was used for that hybrid. A significant percentage of the Yamasees
themselves were zambos and during this 1 8th century that tribe became
increasingly noted for its Negroid features. In spite of the statutes, Africans
and Indians intermingled, learned each others’ languages, intermarried and
at times made common cause against whites. Mestizos properly may mean
Indian-White, but has also been used for all kinds of combinations. (Ref.
267)

Regarding slavery, the status of white convicts arriving in Chesapeake Bay
whose terms might be up to 14 years or even life did not differ greatly from
that of chattel slaves. White, black and Indian slaves were all marketed and
employed with little distinction, except for the one difference that most
Indian slaves were female. The male Indians would run away and were
difficult to manage, so most of the field hands were young, male blacks.

All the slaves were kept together in compounds and it was inevitable that
much mixing took place. At times Indians owned African slaves and vice
versa. The 1725 census in St. George Parish, South Carolina discloses that
the Indian Nero possessed one Negro black slave and the Indian Sam
Pickins owned six. In turn Negro Robin Johnson owned 9 slaves, all of
whom apparently were Indians. Alexander McGillivray, a mestizo Upper

Creek, died in 1793, leaving a considerable estate, including 60 Negro
slaves.

In time most southern Negroes adopted, at least in a modified form, the
white man's religion and the evangelical sects won more converts than the
staid Anglicans. Another change occurred in the Negro culture after they
came to America - they dropped the patrilineal society of Africa and
became matrilineal. There were probably several factors in this, but one was
certainly the matrilineal culture of the southern Indians. A handful of
surviving Christian Indians abandoned Florida in 1763 when the British
took over, retiring with the Spaniards to Cuba or Mexico. Although a few
Catholic converts still remained among the Florida Indians when that area
was restored to Spain in 1783, no effort was made to re-establish the
missions and no Catholic Indians remain today. Any remnants had been
absorbed by the emerging Seminoles.

THE MISSISSIPPI REGION, THE "OLD NORTHWEST, AND THE FRENCH AND INDIAN WAR

Frenchmen were at the upper end of the Mississippi watershed and Detroit
was founded by Sieur Antoine de la Mothe Cadillac in 1701 as a fort to
control the entrances to Lakes Huron and Erie. There were Indians all over
the eastern part of what we now call the Midwest. The Shawnees, who were
known in the south as Savannahs, were at various periods widely dispersed,
but by 1725 most of the southern bands had rejoined their kinsmen in
Pennsylvania. Pressure there from the expanding white frontier and the
Iroquois slowly pushed them westward, where they established new
villages in the Wyoming and Susquehanna valleys. During the second
quarter of this 18th century part of the tribe again moved south, seeking
refuge among the Upper Creeks in Alabama, while the majority was settled
in mid-century along the Scioto River in central Ohio. They were
surrounded by a great many other tribes, including the Liamis,
Potawatomis, Delawares, Wyandots and Senecas. (Ref. 293) In the territory
now known as the State of Illinois, there were herds of 400 to 500 buffalo
seen frequently even as late as 1792, but within 5 years of that time they
were all gone, driven across the Mississippi by hunters and domestic
farming activities. (Ref. 217) With them went the Indians. In Minnesota,

Chippewa and Sioux fought over the wild rice stands in the northern lakes
in mid-century. (Ref. 222) The Sioux moved into the South Dakota area as
nomadic horsemen with a far different life style than the original valley
farming Indians, whom we have described there from the 10th to the 14th
centuries. (Ref. 241) They had received their horses indirectly from the
Spaniards in the southwest.

In the lower Mississippi region in 1713 St. Denis, from French Biloxi,
settled Natchitoches as the oldest city in Louisiana. Near there were a series
of small Indian states, including the famous Natchez, perhaps the last
inheritors of the Mound-building tradition. There were perhaps 4,000
Natchez people left at the beginning of this century, living in 7 villages
clustered near the present city of Natchez. Their social structure included a
chief, the Great Sun and his relatives, known as Little Suns. A step below
were nobles, then groups of Honored Men, a class achievable by anyone
through distinguished action in war or religious devotion and finally the
Commoners or Stinkards. Each Sun and Noble, however, had to marry a
Stinkard, so there was a constant social turnover. These Indians attacked
French Louisiana colonies in 1729, killing 200 and taking women, children
and black slaves as prisoners. When they revolted against the French again
in 1734, however, within a few years almost none remained alive. The
French commanders disposed of a thousand captives in the West Indies.
(Ref. 215, 267)

Throughout the century whenever England and France were threatening
each other or at war in Europe, the Canadian French made sporadic raids on
the frontiers of New England and vice versa. At the end of the 1740s the
French took an expedition down the Ohio River and buried lead plates to
mark their territorial possessions. Then in 1754 they destroyed a rude
English fort at the crucial spot where the Monongahela and Allegheny
rivers meet (near present Pittsburg) and built their own Fort Duquesne. At
21 years of age George Washington had his first taste of battle against the
French as they moved out of that fort in 1755 at the opening of the true
French and Indian War. General Braddock and his English forces were
badly defeated by the French and their 1,000 Indian allies.

The victory brought almost all the Indians of the old "northwest" to the
French side. This was the American aspect of the Seven Years War but it
was a frontier war, strange to the British and they suffered atrociously in the
mountains and forests from Indian guerrillas and in the pitched battles they
were out-maneuvered. Af ter six years the English did take Quebec and
Montreal and the fighting ended. In the Treaty of Paris, three years later,
Canada and the whole empire of France in the interior United States were
transferred to England. We have noted previously that in the same treaty
Florida was taken from Spain, who had come in too late and on the wrong
side. The Spanish did acquire La Salle's vast, vague region of Louisiana,
however, from the French. (Ref. 39)

The Old Northwest was the territory about the Great Lakes and between the
Ohio and Mississippi rivers. By 1750 the Shawnees of that area were
divided into five semi-autonomous political units or bands, each occupying
a special place within the tribal confederacy. The Thawegila and
Chalahgawtha bands supplied the leaders for the entire tribe, but all the
bands took an active part in the French and Indian Wars, most of them
supporting the French. Some of them fought beside Captain Daniel de
Beaujeu as they cut the British column to pieces in the battle near Fort
Duquense. During the next 4 years they joined bands of Delawares to raid
the English frontier in Pennsylvania and Virginia. After the fall of Quebec,
however, most Shawnees withdrew from the warfare, at least for the
moment. The Treaty of 1763 did not give absolute peace on the frontier. In
that very year Chief Pontiac of the Ottawas along with some Wyandots,
Potawatamis and Ojibwas, attacked and then besieged the fort at Detroit
from May until November([footnote]. Inspired by that, the Shawnees again
attacked into eastern Ohio and West Virginia, killing settlers and burning
farms. They sent runners as far west as Illinois, urging the tribes of the
Wabash Valley to attack British forts and traders. Actually the Shawnee
anger was directed at the "Virginians" - those whites trying to occupy
Kentucky. (Ref. 293)

This was to be known as Pontiac's Rebellion or Pontiac's Conspiracy. (Ref.
38)

Cumberland Gap is a 1,665 feet elevation pass through the Appalachian
Mountains lying at the border of Kentucky, Tennessee and Virginia, long

known to the Indians, but discovered for the Virginia Land Company by Dr.
Thomas Walker in 1750 and named for the Duke of Cumberland. From the
pass trails fan out to the south and west so that somewhat later a veteran of
the French and Indian Wars, Daniel Boone, made this a highway to the
promised land of the west. The so-called "Wilderness Road" was nearly 300
miles long, ending at the Ohio River at Louisville and within 15 years, at
the end of the century, 100,000 people had traversed this trail to western
Tennessee and Kentucky. Mostly unlettered, these people needed a good
gun, a good horse and a good wife, along with good health, good luck, an
axe and salt. Most had to carry their salt over the mountains, but at Boone
County, Kentucky was a huge brine lake, which incidentally was also a
great archaeological find, with a graveyard of mastodon bones. The salt
licks were also used by the Indians and this immediately helped to initiate
hard feelings early in the settlement of the area.

During the six years of the French-Indian War, the British got an education
and became aware of the fact that they needed to overhaul their imperial
system and strengthen their central authority. Previously all relation of
England to the colonies was on the basis of a commercial empire, on the
theory that the colonies existed solely for the benefit of the homeland and
that in return the homeland owed them protection. Although the Acts of
Trade and Navigation had been passed by Parliament in 1651 they had not
been enforced until this century. These Acts called for exclusive navigation,
in that all commerce had to involve only British or colonial ships and the
"Entrepot Principle" which meant that foreign trade should normally be
conducted through the mother country. After the war just discussed,
England began to pass constricting laws, new taxes and new army
conscriptions from the colonies themselves. This shocked the Americans.
First came the Stamp Act, innocuous enough in itself, but inf uriating to the
colonists and soon repealed at the insistence of William Pitt. But then came
George 111 and Lord North, with still more repressive laws and taxes and a
show-down became inevitable. (Ref. 39) (Go to 1140 & 1153)

FACTORS LEADING TO THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION

1. Enforcement of the Sugar Act[footnote] of 1733 by William Pitt in
1760. Early Americans, like most Europeans of the day, preferred to
drink almost anything in preference to water and the New Englanders
made everything from poor whiskey to pumpkin beer, maple syrup and
persimmons to apple-jack. But soon the main drink in the colonies was
rum and the yearly consumption was 3 3/4 gallons per person,
including women and children. Some believe that the Sugar Act which
imposed a heavy tax on both sugar and molasses (if they came from
anyplace but the British owned Caribbean Islands) was more important
in the declaration of independence than the tea tax, because the rum
trade was based on molasses. The rum was felt to be important, not
only for the local consumption but because the New England shippers
could exchange rum for slaves in Africa, then trade the slaves in the
West Indies for more molasses, which was taken back to the colonies
to make more rum. Alcohol was a mainstay of 18th century America.
When George Washington was campaigning for the Virginia
legislature in 1758, his agents doled out almost 3 3/4 gallons of beer,
wine, cider or rum to every voter and Washington was afraid this
would not be enough. (Ref. 217)

Sometimes called the "Molasses Act"

2. The Iron Act of 1750 prohibiting colonists from manufacturing iron
products, but allowing them to develop their ore deposits for exchange
in England for the manufactured pieces. This was the classic
mercantilism of the British colonial system, using colonies to produce
raw materials, which the mother country could process and sell back.
This law was generally ignored by the Americans

3. The Garrisoning of 10,000 British troops, and this chiefly in cities,
rather than on frontiers where they were needed

4. The Revenue Act of 1764, to raise money to defray the expense of
troops "defending the colonies". This act put duties on foreign sugar,
European luxuries and limited some exports

5. The Stamp Act of 1775. This was the first direct, internal tax levied on
the colonies. Every type of legal document, even such as college
diplomas, was heavily taxed and payable in sterling. Every copy of
newspapers, each advertisement in papers, etc. was taxed. Riots
against enforcement officials began immediately. A middle-class
organization, "Sons of Liberty", sprung up in every seaport and kept

the courts from acting, thus nullifying the law. It was repealed by a
new administration in England in 1766

6. The Townshend Act of 1767. Avoiding an internal tax, which the
colonists thought unconstitutional, this levied duties on certain English
manufactures entering America - paper, glass, paint and the East India
Company's tea. The culminating blow was a whole new customs
regulation organization to enforce this, using Admiralty Courts to try
cases under the Acts of Trade and Navigation, without a jury. The
Townshend duties were repealed in 1770, except for tea. It was at that
time that Samuel Adams, a middle class Bostonian, began to lead
opposition as a Boston "radical"

7. Land Grievances. There were brawls in the back-country from New
Hampshire to South Carolina over land boundaries, land companies
and the like, with resulting grievances of frontiersmen against the
establishment on the coast. All felt their problems had no attention in
Parliament. The Boston Tea Party of 1773. The Sons of Liberty,
dressed as Indians, boarded three, unloaded tea ships in Boston Harbor
and dumped the cargo into the sea. This was a protest against the tax
on tea and it had the calculated effect of irritating the British
government into unwise acts of reprisal. This is what Sam Adams
wanted

8. The Coercive Acts of 1774. The Boston Port Act virtually blockaded
Boston until it paid for the dumped tea. The Administration of Justice
Acts chastised Massachusetts, making councilmen, judges, sheriff s,
etc. all appointees of the king. The Quartering Act empowered royal
governors to commandeer houses for soldiers. It should be noted that
many old Whigs and merchants in England opposed all of these Acts

One of the first skirmishes of the revolution took place in Boston in 1770,
when colonists and British troops exchanged shots in the so-called "Boston
Massacre". Three civilians were killed and two more died later, including a
black man, Crispus Attucks. Who fired the first shot or threw the first
stone? Following this episode a revolutionary conspiracy and a colonial
underground was formed by James Otis, a Whig lawyer and scholar, and
Samuel Adams, the genuine rabble-rouser. They formed committees of
correspondence running clear down to South Carolina. In Virginia the

headquarters were in a tavern and members included Patrick Henry and
Thomas Jefferson. (Ref. 39)

The first Continental Congress met on September 5, 1774 at Philadelphia
with 55 members chosen by revolutionary conventions in 12 continental
colonies. The Congress issued the Declaration of Rights and an agreement
called "The Association" - a non-importation, non-consumption agreement
regarding imports from Britain unless the Coercive Acts were repealed. The
first true fighting of the war occurred in April, 1775, when General Gage
set out to Concord to destroy patriot munitions. The famous stories of
Lexington and Concord and later Bunker Hill, etc. are sufficiently well
known by all to not require repetition here. Politically, the next step was the
Second Continental Congress, which met in May of 1775. At about the
same time Parliament passed an act prohibiting all manner of trade and
commerce with the colonies. The latter countered with the Declaration of
Independence in July, 1776, worded chiefly by Thomas Jefferson.

FEATURES OF THE AMERICAN REVOLUTIONARY WAR

The war was actually not popular in America. The army was chiefly
infantry regiments named after various colonies, where they had been
recruited. Every line regiment had Negroes. The colonies could have
provided a regular army of 100,000 but they could never have fed and
clothed so many. The greatest number of men at any one time was 20,000,
in 1778. Washington's army went hungry because of reluctance of farmers
and merchants to exchange food and clothing for a Continental chit. The
chief source of food was Connecticut, through actions of Governor
Jonathan Trumbull.

Financing of the Revolution

1. Foreign loan. 6.4 million dollars were borrowed from France, in
addition to a direct grant of 2.6 million. John Adams got an additional
loan from the Dutch

2. Domestic loans. 20 million dollars were raised by both interest bearing
bonds and certificates of indebtedness for goods received

3. Requisitions in money or in kind, apportioned among states in
proportion to the estimated population

All loans, domestic and foreign and the states debts were later repaid at par.
The local currency depreciated, but a later French loan negotiated by Robert
Morris saved the day.

Alistair Cooke (Ref. 39) asks the question: "How did a rag-tag army defeat
one of the crack armies of Europe?" And then he gives the following
answers:

e Weaponry. The British used smooth-bore muskets that allowed a
lateral error of 3 feet at 100 yards and used for mass "spraying" of
close order troops. In contrast the American frontiersmen used the
Pennsylvania flintlock, with double the barrel length and grooves
(rifling) to make the bullet spin and stay on line They could put a ball
in aman's head-at 150 to 200 yards

¢ Guerilla hit and run warfare

e The choice of Washington as commander in chief, as this brought
Virginia into the war

e The idealism of Ben Franklin and Thomas Jefferson spread among the
people

One might add a 5th factor in the American victory - the difficulty of the
British in supplying an army of 90,000 soldiers an ocean away from their
homeland, as after 1775 the Americans had pretty well prevented British
troops from access to local supplies.

Under the circumstances the British navy did a good job, but in January
1779 the Red Coat army in New York had only 4 days rations left when a
relieving fleet arrived. (Ref. 279)

The final battle of the war occurred in 1781 at Yorktown. General

Cornwallis was already under siege with Washington's troops on land; then
the French navy bottled him in[footnote]. In 1782 there was still occasional
fighting in the west, where the British had Indian associates and this will be

discussed a little more in a later paragraph. The Peace of Paris of February
3, 1783 involved Great Britain, France, Spain, the Netherlands and the new
United States, with the latter winning territorial rights west to the
Mississippi, north to Canada and south to the Floridas. The British did
retain Newfoundland fishing rights and free navigation on the Mississippi.
Spain wanted Gibraltar, but settled for the return of Florida.

An interesting sidelight is that the French fleet under the Comte de Grasse
had re-fueled in the Caribbean and made for the Chesapeake, while his
English counterpart, Admiral Rodney, was attacking the Dutch Island of St.
Eustatius, just north of St. Kitts, because the islanders had been trading
illicitly with the rebel colonies. (Ref. 215)

After the war, there was still not a nation but a group of independent
countries. Within four years the Union was close to bankruptcy and strong
leaders were not in sight. About 1/3 of the people in this new "nation" were
Tories, who had remained loyal to England during the war. Pennsylvania
and South Carolina were generous and compassionate with these people,
but other colonies reacted much differently and great numbers of Tories
were exiled to Canada, the West Indies or back to England. Immediately
after the termination of fighting various states started to draw up
declarations of rights and constitutions. The Virginia Declaration of Rights
was one of the great liberty documents of all time.

Articles of Confederation had been drawn up as early as November, 1777
by a Congress designed to preserve the independence and sovereignty of the
states. There was a considerable revival of commerce between 1782 and
1789 and some literary activity, as evidenced by the publication of
Webster's Dictionary by Noah Webster. But all was not completely peaceful
- in Massachusetts a revolt of poor farmers against the courts, who were
prosecuting debtors was called "Shay's Rebellion". The situation was
alleviated when some new legislators were elected.

Besides having European nations treating it with contempt, the new nation
was scarcely able to contain the Indian tribes and to pay the interest on the
Revolutionary War debt. It was on the brink of collapse when Congress

appealed to the people for a new constitution. (Ref. 217) Finally delegates
did meet in the so-called Constitutional Convention in 1787. The problem

was not to give the states anything, but to take some existing powers from
them. (Ref. 39) Sam Adams, Thomas Paine, Patrick Henry[footnote] and
others of the "Pampleteers"” group were not present. As Cooke (Ref. 39)
puts it - such men "love the bonfire, but find the rebuilding something of a
bore". Alexander Hamilton wanted a lifetime chief executive, a lifetime
senate of property owners and in effect wanted to extinguish the states
altogether. His opposite was George Mason, a 62 year old, uncompromising
democrat, who was about 1/2 century before his time. He called himself a
radical republican and argued long and hard for individual liberties such as
he had engineered previously in the Virginia Bill of Rights. Between these
two extremes was James Madison, 36 years old, also from Virginia, but
with a middle ground approach that led to the final constitution. The
solution was compromise and at the end even Hamilton helped to publicize
and get the document approved.

When Patrick Henry gave his famous "give me liberty or give me death"
speech, his wife was a hopeless psychotic in a strait-jacket, confined to a
basement room. Tom Paine had had a break-up with his second wife, whom
he simply left in England. (Ref. 20)

Some additional information concerning the Constitutional Convention can
be found in "Documents illustrative of the Formation of the Union of the
American States", published for the Library of Congress by the
Government printing office in 1927. (Ref. 123) The following contains
excerpts from that source:

From the notes of William Patterson of New Jersey, while preparing a
speech for July 9, 1787 we find this information about the populations of
the various states:

1. New Hampshire-- 1774 --100,000

2. Massachusetts -- 1774 -- 400,000

3. Rhode Island -- 1783 -- 48,538 Whites and 3,331 Blacks

4. Connecticut -- 1774 -- 192,000 Whites and nearly 6,000 Blacks

5. New York -- 1786 -- 219,996 Whites and 18,889 Blacks

6. New Jersey -- 1783 -- 129,000 Whites and about 10,000 Blacks

7. Maryland -- 1774 -- 350,000 (Estimated) with 3/7 Blacks - 150,000

8. Virginia -- 1774 -- 650,000. (This apparent4 as a total, because he
writes then - Blacks as 10 to 11 - 300,000[footnote |
Trager (Ref. 222) writes that as of 1775 there were 450,000 slaves
below the Mason Dixon line

The Congress early wrote an Ordinance for the Government of the territory
of the United States Northwest of the river Ohio and it contained, among
others, the following interesting features:

e "Article II --The utmost good faith shall always be observed toward
the Indians; their lands and property shall never be taken from them
without their consent; and in their property, rights and liberty they
never shall be invaded or disturbed unless in just and lawful wars
authorized by Congress

e Article VI - There was to be neither slavery nor involuntary servitude
in the territory, but escaped slaves were to be returned to owners in the
original states

In the convention there was much discussion about slavery. Mr. John
Rutledge of South Carolina said that religion and humanity had nothing to
do with this question and that it was a matter of "interest". "If the northern
states consult their interest, they will not oppose the increase of slaves
which will increase the commodities of which they will become the
carriers." Mr. Charles C. Pinkney of South Carolina added that South

Carolina could never receive the plan (Constitution) if it prohibits the slave
trade. He further stated that the entire world had had slaves - Greece, Rome
and other ancient states - and that slavery had been sanctioned by France,
Holland and other modern states. "In all ages one-half of mankind have
been slaves." (Ref. 123)

Thomas Jefferson was not present at the Constitutional Convention as he
was serving as Minister to France at the time, but it will be worthwhile to
consider at this time a few more details about that most remarkable man. He
was a Greek and Latin scholar, geologist, musician, astronomer,
meteorologist, archaeologist, anthropologist and gardener extraordinaire, as
well as statesman and lawyer. (Ref. 39) His father was a Welshman with
distaste for English rule, although already a third generation colonial. As a

young man Thomas was accused, rightly or wrongly, of many indiscretions
with married women and finally married a rich widow with a child, only to
soon take a mulatto slave as his concubine| footnote]. His house slaves
alone numbered 25. He loved fine wine, blooded horses and exotic orchids,
all of which he kept at Monticello. He preserved a legacy of over 25,000
letters from friends and acquaintances and copies of his own letters that
numbered some 18,000, all indexed. In spite of meticulous record keeping,
however, when he died he owed over $100,000. He befriended the Shawnee
Indians and talked against slavery, having introduced a bill in the Virginia
legislature at age 24 to permit emancipation by free choice of the slave
holder, but the bill was defeated. He wrote about and compared Whites,
Blacks and Indians, giving certain features to all, some good, some bad, but
was remarkable liberal for an 18th century Virginian, where there were 10
blacks for every 11 whites. During the war, Virginia never officially
permitted slave enlistment. Nevertheless, free blacks numbering about 500
did fight as soldiers and sailors by November 1777. Thousands of other
Virginia slaves, however, fled to the British side, including 22 of Jefferson's
own. Other colonies lost slaves also; 4,000 from Savannah, 6,000 from
Charleston, 4,000 from New York and thousands more were carried off by
the French.

When the French savant and refugee, the Comte de Volney, visited
Monticello in 1796, he noted in his journal great astonishment at seeing
slave children as white as himself! (Ref. 20)

Jefferson was enthusiastic about the new inoculation against small-pox that
became available near the end of the century, although the more religious
people were upset about it, still claiming that illness was a manifestation of
God's intention, if not a punishment for sin. Jefferson, himself, was a deist.
John Adams and Jefferson were once great friends, but had a falling-out
chiefly over the French revolution, which Jefferson supported. In addition
there was a great rivalry with and finally hatred of the younger Alexander
Hamilton, a bastard son of a wayward descendant of a French Huguenot in
the West Indies and a Scotsman, 4th son of a Scottish laird. Although it was
common knowledge that Hamilton was a womanizer, he married into a rich,
Dutch patroon family along the Mohawk. He seemed to cherish a monarchy
and wanted to make the childless George Washington a king, with himself
as the chosen heir. (Ref. 20)

As is well known, after the Constitution was adopted the new government
commenced to function in 1789 with George Washington as the first
president and John Adams as vice president. John Jay was chief justice,
General Knox secretary of war, Edmund Randolph attorney general and
upon his return from France, Thomas Jefferson became secretary of state.
Any enthusiasm for emancipation of slaves in Virginia was rapidly cooled
by the news of the Santo Domingo rising of the blacks under the Jamaican
voodoo priest, Boukman and Toussaint L'Ouverte. (See the next section,
please). As secretary of state, Jefferson was a states’ rights and southern
policies advocate, who was favorable to France.

Map taken from Reference 97

His associates formed the Republican Party of that time (later to become the
present day Democratic Party). The real power of the first administration,
however, was the secretary of the treasury, Alexander Hamilton, who
favored Britain over France and whose policies led to the establishment of
the Federalist Party. The United States navy had to be rebuilt in 1794,
stimulated by piracy of the Barbary corsairs and some troubles with the
British navy.

As John Adams became president with Jefferson as vice-president in 1797
naval war with France loomed on the horizon. The aggressive and
subversive French Directory let French privateers loose against the
American merchant fleet and by June more than 300 American vessels had
been captured. The Federalists felt that France was a great menace and that
England was the only barrier against France's ruling of the world. An
American negotiation mission arrived in Paris just after Bonaparte had
beaten Austria and the Directory was at the height of power and arrogance.
Talleyrand, the minister of foreign affairs, was insufferable and tried to
bribe the commission. When reports of this reached home, President Adams
and Congress created a navy department, navy yards were purchased and an
ambitious program of naval construction was undertaken. By the close of
1798 some 14 American man-of-war ships were at sea and transatlantic
shipping was being protected every place, with the help of an arrangement
with the British navy. The first test battle was off Nevis Island in the
Caribbean, where the U.S.S. Constellation fought for an hour and won over

the crack French frigate L'Insurgente. This helped the Federalists to win a
strong majority in the 1798-1799 Congressional elections. But Talleyrand
changed his approach, saved face and full war did not occur. Nevertheless,
there was a rebirth of the U.S. Navy and at the end of hostilities, there were
54 American warships.

As the century ended in 1800, Jefferson ran for president. It is interesting
that clergymen were against him. He felt that both the Episcopalian and the
Congregational churches hoped to be named as the established Church of
the United States, but he had "sworn upon the Altar of God, eternal hostility
against every form of tyranny over the mind of man". (Ref. 20)

We must return to events west of the Appalachians during and after the
American Revolution. Shawnee hatred of the Virginians virtually assured
that the former remaining in Ohio would oppose the colonists during the
war. In January 1778 a war party from the Chalahgawtha (Chillicothe)
village captured Daniel Boone and some companions at the Blue Licks on
the Licking River. Boone later escaped, but all through the summer of 1778
Shawnee warriors fell upon Kentucky settlements, burning, capturing
horses and taking scalps. Such raids and counter attacks by such as Colonel
John Bowman's 200 mounted volunteers continued through 1779. Although
few Indians were killed, the Americans captured many horses and much
Indian property. Somewhat demoralized, many Shawnee tribesmen
retreated down the Ohio and eventually crossed the Mississippi,
establishing new villages in what is now Missouri.

White settlers crowded into Indian lands in southern Ohio and the
remaining Shawnees turned to British Indian agents, who assured them that
they still owned their lands. Hoping to forestall more bloodshed, the United
States negotiated a series of treaties with the Iroquois, Wyandots and other
tribes during 1784 and 1785 and assembled a delegation of Shawnees at
Fort Finney in January of 1786. American agents told these Shawnees that
they must give up their land claims east of the Miami and acknowledge the
sovereignty of the United States over all their villages. The Indians were
astonished, but under threats of destruction of their women and children,
Kekewepellethe and other Shawnee leaders, signed the documents, but they
soon lashed out again at white settlers in southern Ohio. Two federal

expeditions were sent out against the Shawnees - the first under General
Josiah Harmar and the next under Governor St. Clair, who had almost 2,000
regulars, militia and volunteers. The Shawnees with Miamis, Potawatomis,
Delawares and other allies, killed over 630 Americans and the latter had to
admit disaster. During the spring of 1794 the British built a new Fort
Miamis at modern Toledo[footnote] Thinking that was a sure indication of
British military assistance, the Shawnees dared the American to come again
and more warfare seemed inevitable. The new leader of the American
forces, "Mad Anthony" Wayne, however, had spent two years training an
army and on August 20, 1794 this army swept through Shawnee barricades
at Fallen Timbers, Ohio and crushed the Indians. They had no choice but to
make peace and on August 3, 1795 signed the Treaty of Greenville, in
which they exchanged most of their former homeland for a few trade goods
and an annuity of $1,000. The only land they retained was the northwest
quadrant of Ohio. (Go to 1140 & 1153)

This was on land ceded by Great Britain by the treaty of 1783 (see map on
page 10Z9) but it is obvious that the British in Canada and the Old
Northwest did not pay a great deal of attention to that

THE SOUTHWEST AND FAR WEST

West of the Mississippi whites and Indians alike were little affected by the
American Revolution or the events leading up to it. The spread of
horsemanship from the Spanish contact had worked a rapid transformation
in the Great Plains, but this was only the beginning of a radical cultural
adjustment to a nomadic life. (Ref. 139) Between 1720 and 1722 Mexican
Spaniards occupied Texas, fearing loss of the territory to France. A mission
was founded at San Antonio in 1718. Around 1700, using the horse,
Comanches came out of Wyoming and fought against the Apaches first and
then kept the Texas settlements in a permanent state of siege, after a big
battle on the Red River in 1759. Spanish Governor Domingo Cabello listed
the population of Texas in 1783 as 2,819 Spanish people. In the adjacent
area of Louisiana, by 1797, American squatters made up nearly 1/2 of the
population of 50,000. (Ref. 198) New Orleans had been founded about
1720 by Le Moyne de Bienville to control river traffic. After 1763,

however, Spain controlled this area until the French Consulate forced its
return to France in 1800.

Besides Texas and New Mexico, most of Colorado and Arizona, with slices
of Utah, Wyoming, Kansas and Oklahoma, all belonged to Spain in an area
called the Kingdom of New Mexico, by Madrid. White settlements were
made chiefly along the Rio Grande River. Albuquerque was established in
1706, with Taos soon after and there were Spaniards about Pueblo,
Colorado by 1750. There was extensive trade between that area and
Chihuahua in old Mexico, some 600 miles south. In some years as many as
500,000 sheep were sent there. It is unfortunate that even the Franciscan
priests treated the Indians as servants and serfs. In the 1770s almost 1700
Spaniards were killed by Apaches and Comanches, now teaming up against
the white invaders. But the area continued to be populated, particularly after
Governor de Anza persuaded the Comanches and Apaches to fight each
other again instead of the Spaniards. The Utes joined forces with the
Apaches. By 1799 the Spanish population in that area was 18,826. (Ref.
198, 165) The Pima Indians[footnote] of southern Arizona fought the
Apaches, but continued friendly to the Spaniards. In 1775 they numbered
about 2,500, living as sedentary farmers, raising corn, squash, beans, cotton
and Spanish wheat by means of irrigation. (Ref. 38)

Today about 1/2 of the adults on Pima farm reservations have diabetes
mellitus. William Tucker (Ref. 289) believes that they are representative of
certain groups of Polynesians and American Indians who, in their past
history, have gone through periods of infrequent meals. As an adaptation to
those large, infrequent meals, their bodies developed low insulin
production, allowing the blood sugar to rise and stay high longer and with
slower use, carry the individual over the starvation periods. This genetic
diabetic trait results in obesity and diabetes in a setting of adequate food
and regular meals

In the far west, Spain was also active both by land and by sea. The land
between Mexico and California was mapped by Father Kino, who went
overland to San Diego in 1769 and established missions in the Baja
peninsula. The last great military expedition of the Spaniards came about in
the 1750s when there were rumors that the Russians were going to take
upper California (the state of California, today) and the Spanish considered

this a part of New Spain. Actually the Russians were only chasing the sea
otter, but King Carlos, of Spain, ordered out expeditions by land and sea to
build a chain of forts and hold the California coast. With the military went
priests and in particular one Father Serra, who built 21 missions, the main
architectural legacy of Spain in California. He personally walked between
4,000 and 5,000 miles up and down the coast line, over mountains and
deserts. The Spanish did bring oats, wheat, barley and oranges to America
and refined the culture of maize. (Ref. 39) The earliest California missions
were in San Diego, San Gabriel and San Luis Obispo, all established by
1773. In 1775 Don Bruno Heceta, sailing the "Santiago" found the
Columbia River mouth, naming the river "Rio St. Roc". Spain had a
settlement at Cape Medocino, about 130 miles north of San Francisco. (Ref.
63 The Presidio of San Francisco was founded by Bautista de Anza,
subsequently the governor of New Mexico, in 1776. All overland routes
from Mexico to California were interrupted in 1781, however, by bloody
Yuma Indian rebellions. At the very end of the century (1792-1794) George
Vancouver made three sea visits to California for Great Britain. (Ref. 198)

(Continue on page 1157)

MEXICO, CENTRAL AMERICA, AND THE CARIBBEAN

In Mexico Spanish rule continued in a stagnant civilization. The object of
Spanish colonization was to enrich the Spanish king, without thought to the
effect on the population and progress of the colonized country. There were
5,000 to 6,000 priests, with 6,000 to 8,000 other members of the religious
orders and they were owners of tremendous properties. By the end of the
century there were perhaps a 1,000,000 creoles and the mestizos were
becoming more numerous. In the army, the privates were mestizos and the
officers, creoles. The 3,000,000 or 4,000,000 Indians lived very little
differently from their ancestors. As the century progressed and after wide-
spread administrative reforms by the new Bourbon monarch, Philipe, King
of Spain and grandson of Louis XIV, - especially liberalization of trade
regulation - there was a general economic upsurge and the growth of a large
middle class population gave new intellectual and cultural life to the colony.
A very rapid population increase was apparent by the close of the century,

apparently as a result of the development of immunity to the various
European diseases. Spanish America became much more Europeanized,
although racial plurality, prevalence of large estates and the widespread
compulsory labor (both debt peonage and outright slavery) and the
extraordinary economic and cultural importance of the Church,
distinguished it from the most of Europe. Mexico City had 112,926 people
in 1793 and was larger than any city in France or England except Paris and
London. There were more people in Mexico than in all of the thirteen
colonies of North America. (Ref . 139). Silver mines in the northern part of
the country allowed the Mexicans to purchase large quantities of European
goods. When the maize supply, which originated in the south, was
interrupted in 1785-86, however, famine developed in the northern mine
area and there was an endless flight of workers to the south and Mexico
City. (Ref. 292)

Guatemala City was founded in 1776, after the old capital was destroyed by
an earth- quake. (Ref. 213) After about 1720 Britain's largest supply of
American Indian slaves for the West Indies came, not from the U.S.A.
south, but from Central America, primarily the Gulf of Honduras, the
Mosquito Coast and Panama. Mosquito Indians and some Darien warriors
in Panama raided Spanish settlements and Catholic Indian villages in the
interior, returning to the coast with slaves. Two thousand such individuals
were sold by the Mosquitos in the decade following 1712. (Ref. 267)

In the Caribbean, the first coffee plants were started on Martinique by a
French naval officer in 1723 and the Caribbean would eventually supply
90% of the world's coffee. (Ref. 222) Jamaica continued its sugar
production and Saint Domingue produced as much or more. Jamaica, as a
very large island, had gigantic estates developed there, especially after
1740, when the island's sugar economy was expanded. A typical estate
would have a master's house and 9 or 10 black slaves for every white man.
The colonial pound had a lower value than the pound sterling (1 pound
sterling = 1.4 Jamaican pounds). Piracy and pillage by French privateers
was common. (Ref. 292) By 1763 the British had taken previously Spanish
Havana and all the French islands except St. Dominque, but all was restored
by the Treaty of Paris of that year. (Ref 8) Britain did gain permanent

control of Belize and protectorates over Honduras and Nicaragua. (Ref.
119)

Late in the century revolt of slaves in Sainte Domingue (Haiti), led by black
leaders Boukman and Louverte, ruined the French colony there and
changed this island from the richest colony in the world, with sugar and
coffee exports, to the poorest republic. (Ref. 213) This revolt must be
considered a by-product of the French Revolution. (Ref. 249) Slave trouble
occurred on Jamaica, also and resulted in 1739 in the governor's signing of
a fifteen point treaty with the maroon leader, Captain Cudjoe. The maroons
rebelled against both Cudjoe and the settlement, however, and intermittent
con licts continued throughout the century. Actually Cudjoe's maroons
numbered only some thousands, while the total slave population of Jamaica
was about 100,000, with fewer than 10,000 whites. (Ref. 249) Even with all
their troubles, the planters made at most 8 to 10% profit, the real wealth
being accumulated by capitalists in England. (Ref. 292)

When the British took over the tiny island of St. Eustatius in the Leeward
group, in 1781, Admiral Rodney found that Jews comprised at least 1/5 of
the merchant population. A fine brick synagogue and a large mikve (bath

house) were scheduled to be fully excavated in the summer of 1982. (Ref.
245, 260) Additional Notes (Continue on page 1174)

SOUTH AMERICA (See map on page 945)

It has been said that in this century South America was powered by
2,000,000 mules, although in the Argentine, ox carts were used. In 1776
Peru had 500,000 mules for trade or drawing coaches on the coast and in
the Andes. 50,000 a year were imported from the Argentine pampas. (Ref.
260) The human population was about 15,000,000 of which about 20%
were Caucasian. (Ref. 213)

WESTERN AND NORTHERN COASTS OF SOUTH AMERICA

European expeditionary forces continued intermittent fighting over
American ports. With 100 ships and 27,000 men, Britain's Admiral Vernon
attacked the Spanish fortress at Cartagena, Columbia in 1741, but the
Spanish, with the help of malaria and yellow fever, held them off and the
British retired to Jamaica, having lost 4,500 soldiers, at least as far as
effectiveness was concerned. Cayenne, in French Guinea, was actually a
French penal colony. Cocoa plantations in Venezuela were created by the
Caracas Company in 1728. Southern Venezuela, however, was a_ wild
country with huge flocks of sheep shepherded by Indians and Spanish-
Indian half-breeds. (Ref. 292)

In the Spanish part of South America a relatively small number of
Europeans ruled over a large native population, but as the races and skills
were gradually mingled some industry developed, so that by 1700 Spanish
America was nearly self sufficient. There were only rare, minor uprisings,
the most important of these occurring in Peru in 1780 and 81, led by a man
claiming royal Inca descent. Earthquakes were frequent, with Lima virtually
destroyed in 1746.

With the new liberalization of trade and transport decreed from the new
Bourbon monarchy of Spain, the colonies were allowed for the first time to
trade freely among themselves. Gradually wider circles of Spanish-
Americans began to interest themselves in the new knowledge from Europe.
(Ref. 139) In the third quarter of the century, under the enlightened Spanish
reign of Carlos III, the area had even begun to make preparations for self-
government, but then the French Revolution spoiled everything. (Ref. 68)

The great silver mines of Bolivia continued to operate during the century.
The greatest mining camp was Potosi, 4,000 meters high in the Andes,
where more than 100,000 people lived under most expensive conditions. A
hen could cost 8 reals, an egg 2. Only the merchants made money. (Ref.
292) The Atacamanian Indians allowed a permanent contact between the
populations of southern Peru and the tribes of central Chile - the Diaguites
and Araucanians. They kept their own language until late in this century
and had a population of about 10,000. One of the foods used by South
American Indians on long journeys was prepared by taking 1/4 inch strips
of lean game meat (later beef), dipping them in strong brine or rubbing

them with salt, then rolling them in animal hide for 10 to 12 hours to allow
re-absorption of the salt and release of some juices, then hanging the strips
in the sun to dry and finally tying them in bundles. The Indians called this
charqui which was later corrupted in the United States West to "jerked" beef
or "jerky". (Ref. 211)

EASTERN COAST AND CENTRAL SOUTH AMERICA

The alliance of Portugal with England during the war of the Spanish
succession led to French attacks on Brazilian ports, Rio de Janeiro being
sacked in 1711. There was continued trouble between the Portuguese and
the converted Indians (the Paulistas), with some open warfare finally
resulting in the pushing of the line of Portuguese territory farther westward
into the jungles. In addition there was war (1710-11) between the native
Brazilians of Olinda, capital of Pernambuco, and the Portuguese town of
Recife. Again the latter won and made Recife the capital of Brazil until
1763 when it was moved to Rio de Janeiro because of the development of
nearby gold mines. Actually the peak gold production was between the
years of 1750 and 1755, when over 15 tons a year were mined. (Ref. 260,
292) Throughout all this Brazil continued to provide Europe with sugar,
coffee, cacao, rice and cotton, in addition to the gold, but since the Indian
labor population had been almost obliterated by conquest and disease, they
had been replaced by Africans.

By 1775 some 5 1/2 million slaves had been brought to America, although
only 1 1/2 million had survived. (Ref. 8) By mid-century the minister the
Marquis de Pombal introduced colonial reforms, including the removal of
certain restrictions and taxes and the organization of trading companies.
Actually some native Brazilians were appointed to important governmental
posts, racial equality was advocated and defenses were improved, but the
masters of Brazil were still the merchants of Portugal. The discovery of the
rich gold and diamond finds early in the century had helped the economy
considerably.

The Jesuits were expelled from their "reductions" in land-locked Paraguay
among the Guarani Indians. The "reductions" were compounds with two

priests, an Indian supervisor and many Indian farmers and laborers,
ostensibly designed to acquaint the natives with Spanish religion and ways,
but which really became commercial enterprises competing with other
private businesses. The Guarani were language-related to the Tubi groups
of Brazil. (Ref. 8, 38) There were some serious clashes between Spain and
Portugal over the area of Uruguay (then called "Banda Oriental") and
although Spain created the Viceroyalty of La Plata in 1776 as a defensive as
well as administrative measure, the final disposition of the territory was not
finally decided until the next century. (Ref. 119)

The fierce Araucanian Indians, some of whom had escaped the Spaniards in
the 16th century by taking refuge with their stolen Spanish horses on the
eastern slopes of the Andes, subsequently invaded the pampas and
occasionally still threatened Buenos Aires in this century. (Ref. 62) The sale
of thousands of mules a year to Peru and Brazil gave primitive Argentina a
chance to share in the silver and gold of those countries. Some 2,000,000
mules may have been used in Central and South America for saddle or
carrying (rarely for hauling). European oxen were used for - drawing heavy
carts in the pampas and the gauchos were already riding great horses at the
end of the century. Even so, whether traveling by horseback, mule or ox-
cart, travelers across the Argentine deserts had to be sure of elaborate
arrangements to find food and water. (Ref. 260)

Forward to America: A.D. 1801 to 1900
Choose Different Region

. Intro to Era

. Africa

. Central and Northern Asia
. Europe

. The Far East

. The Indian Subcontinent

. The Near East

. Pacific

CONDMDUBRWN FE

Note:In the Aleutian Islands prior to Bering's discovery in 1741 there were
about 16,000 inhabitants with an advanced culture, for aborigines. They
had a relative high standard of living with art, music, medicine, some
surgery and mummification. After the Russians arrived the Aleuts were
essentially enslaved and their numbers dropped to 3,200. (Ref. 310) It is
interesting to note that before his famous voyages to the Pacific James
Cook was an officer aboard the Eagle for 2 years after war started between
England and France (1758) and then as master of a ship he charted much of
the east coast of Canada between the years 1762 and 1769. He helped in
the battle of Louisberg and Quebec on the St. Lawrence. (Ref. 302)

Note:After a revolt in the Windward Islands in the 1,790s, "Black Caribs"
(descendants of Carib Indians and black slaves) were banished from St.
Vincent and went to the Bay Islands off the coast of Honduras and then to
the mainland coast, where many still live in isolated villages. (Ref. 308)

America: A.D. 1801 to 1900

AMERICA

Back to America: A.D. 1701 to 1800

NORTH AMERICA

THE FAR NORTH AND CANADA

ALASKA

The century opened with bloody warfare for the small Russian settlement at
Fort St. Michael on Baranov Island, when the Tlingits Indians massacred
the men and carried off the women to their village at the site of present day
Sitka, in 1802. Two years later Baranov's men, regrouped in kayaks and
supported by a Russian warship, bombarded Sitka and finally forced an
Indian withdrawal. The Russians then built a new fort and in the years that
followed the missionary Father Ivan Veniaminov built a cathedral, started a
seminary, saved the Tlingits from a small-pox epidemic by vaccination,
taught the Aleuts carpentry, blacksmithing and brickmaking, created an
Aleut alphabet and with that translated the Gospels. Baranov was followed
by 13 Russian governors, chiefly naval officers, but there was one prince
and one baron. Commerce with San Francisco was brisk, particularly during
the latter's gold-rush days. Among other things, 20,000 tons of Alaskan ice,
packed in sawdust, was sold in San Francisco at $35 a ton. The zenith of
Russian culture at Sitka was about 1820

The Kiksadi clan of Tlingits dominated the hinterland and thus the principal
source of Russian food supply. Frequently these clans mounted crippling
raids against the Russian mainland settlements, some as late as 1866.
Supply ships from Russia had to go around the Cape of Good Hope and in
some years none arrived. Many Russians died of scurvy before they learned

that potatoes and other vegetables could be grown in the far north. At one
point, the Russians attempted to solve their grain problem by establishing
Fort Ross, only 90 miles north of the Spanish mission of San Francisco, but
the area was not very fertile and they sold out to John Sutter in 1841.

We mentioned in the last chapter that the Russians virtually enslaved the
Aleuts, forcing 1/2 of all males between the ages of 18 and 50 to work for
very meager compensation. By this policy, along with disease and the use
of the white man's firearms, the Aleut population had been reduced to about
1/10 of the original and the Eskimos on the mainland had been cut to about
1/2 by 1857. A massive seal fur industry resulted when a machine was
developed which removed the outer layer of bristly guard hairs from the
animal. A Moscow journal of 1835 boasted that between 1786 and 1832
there had been 3,178,561 Pribilof fur seals killed. Soon the yield decreased
and both European and American fur markets declined so that the fur based
economy ceased to be very profitable. The worst losses were in the 1820s.

When Russia was defeated in the Crimean War in 1856 she was desperate
for money, and that, along with an increasing interest in China rather than
America, was the big f actor leading to the sale of Alaska's 375,000,000
acres to the United States in 1867 for $7,200,000.

That purchase, arranged by Secretary of State William Henry Seward of the
Andrew Johnson administration, resulted in the name "Seward's Folly" for
that region for many years.

All was forgiven at the end of the century when the great Klondike and
Nome gold rushes developed. (Ref. 234, 199)

Alaska's northwest contained some 24 Eskimo groups, all speaking related
tongues.

Unlike their European and Siberian counterparts these Americans relied
more on sea mammals than on the new world reindeer (caribou). Seals,
walruses and sea-lions supplied food, clothes, boats, tents and oil for lamps.
Tendons were used for sewing and bones took the place of wood. The
Eskimos introduced umiaks (large, open, skin boats) and the toggle-headed
harpoon to the world. (Ref. 288)

GREENLAND

Central Greenland remained the most inhospitable of all Arctic areas, but
Eskimos did live all along the southern coasts, both east and west, with a
hybrid Eskimo-Danish culture. Due to an oversight at the Congress of
Vienna in 1815, when Norway was taken away from Denmark, this colony
was overlooked and remained in Danish hands. Administration was poor,
however, and among other troubles the natives had a high incidence of
tuberculosis. In far northwest Greenland a group known simply as Polar
Eskimos lived in complete isolation, using sea-mammal bones for sled
runners and using nets to catch cliff-dwelling birds. There were about 150
people there when Europeans discovered them in 1818. (Ref. 38, 288)

CANADA

Arctic Canada had a mixture of Inuit (Eskimo) people living chiefly north
of the tree-line and Arctic Indians living just south of that region. Among
the latter were the Kutchins, who walked hundreds of miles each summer
after the caribou herds. In winter they used snow-shoes and lived in domed
caribou-skin tents or log and moss houses. They traded with the Eskimos.
Koyukon, Tchin and Chipwyan tribes were all part of those Kutchin people.
Inuit Eskimos lived on the Arctic Ocean coast line from Beaufort Sea to the
Baff in Bay and Davis Strait as well as on the northern shores of Hudson
Bay. (Ref. 288)

In 1825 British North America consisted of 2 major areas: First, there were
the six settled provinces of Newfoundland, Prince Edward Island, Nova
Scotia, New Brunswick and Lower and Upper Canadas; and second there
was all the remaining territory from Hudson's Bay on west to the Pacific.
The first 4 named were known as the Maritime provinces; Lower Canada
was later to become Quebec and had 625,000 chief Iy French people in
1841, while upper Canada later became Ontario and had 455,700
population in the same year. The western territory was owned by the
Hudson's Bay Company and the Northwest Company with the British
government keeping some authority. Each province was ruled by a local
Tory oligarchy which supported the governor.

Occasionally an attempt to gain independence sprouted, such as the revolt
promoted by Louis Joseph Papineau[footnote], an assemblyman, John
Neilson, a Scots and Edmund O'Callaghan, an Irishman - in Quebec.
Papineau's fatal error was in alienating priests by anticlerical outbursts and
when the bishop came out against him, few French Canadians would follow
him. In Ontario an uprising of 1836 came nearer success. This was led by
William Lyon MacKenzie of Toronto and Marchall Bidwell, a fugitive from
the United States. The rebels marched on Toronto, but were dispersed by
one volley from some militia. In May of 1838 Queen Victoria sent the
young Earl of Durham to be commissioner of British North America and he
adopted a course of clemency to the rebels. Through his recommendations
Canada was given responsible government with a ministry responsible to an
elective assembly. Nova Scotia obtained creditable government in 1848
without a rebellion through the statesmanship of Joseph Howe, son of a
Bostonian. The governments of New Brunswick and Prince Edward Island
underwent similar peaceful evolution.

Strangely enough, Papineau took no part in the actual uprisings, as he first
fled to the United States for help and thwarted there, went on to France.
(Ref. 38)

In the 1850s Tsimshian Indians[footnote]| of coastal British Columbia were
savage fighters engaging in ritual cannibalism and they were finally
"tamed" by a preacher, William Duncan, by 1862. He was later made
governor of Vancouver. The gold rush of Vancouver Island and the Fraser
River area occurred in 1858. In the Great Plains were large numbers of
Catholic French Indians called "Metis". For 50 years they made yearly
excursions in the plains to hunt buffalo and in the middle of the century
they were confronted by the Hudson Bay whites, who set up various rules
and regulations, which included the prohibiting of those people to trade
with the Americans in St. Paul, Minnesota. This prairie land (Rupert's
Land) was sold by the Hudson's Bay Company for 300,000 to the New
Dominion of Canada in 1869, just 2 years after that Dominion was
established by the British North American Act. The sale remained unknown
to the 6,000 French-speaking and 4,000 English-speaking mixed bloods and
1600 white settlers in the plains areas.

Tsimshian culture was typical of Northwest Coast Indians and similar to
that of the Haida and the Tlingit. (Ref. 38)

Louis Riel the Younger, 1/8 Chippewa, but educated in Montreal on a
Catholic scholar- ship, became the Metis leader. He rebuffed the
government's attempts to survey and reclaim the land, working out of his
headquarters in Fort Garry, which was later to become Winnepeg. Riel was
hung as a traitor to the Dominion in 1885, 15 years after Manitoba had
become a province. Canadian Mounted Police had been formed and after
the Metis were controlled, the great nations of the Sioux had to be tamed
and that included Sitting Bull, himself, who had gone to Canada after the
famous Custer massacre in the United States. The end result for these
displaced Indians, however, was gradual starvation, as civilization came
west with the Canadian Pacific Railroad in the 1880s. We shall hear much
more about earlier Indian problems in the vicinity of the Great Lakes in
later paragraphs. (Ref. 151, 212, 32)

The formation of the Dominion resulted from three forces, the rise of
Canadian nationalism, a desire of British liberals to slough off colonial
responsibilities and the ambition of some elements in the United States to
annex Canada. The constitution granted to the Dominion reserved the
powers of government in the Parliament at Ottawa, but it failed to quench
provincialism, particularly among the French population, which considered
itself a nation apart, and still does.

Like the United States, Canada had a depression in 1873, which lasted at
least 20 years and slowed the growth of that country considerably. It
recovered only after the completion of the transcontinental Canadian Pacific
Railway in 1885, after years of financial and engineering difficulties. The
election of 1896 brought Sir Wilfrid, a French-Canadian lawyer, to head the
government as premier and his long administration saw a wave of
prosperity as the prairie provinces developed with their new railroad
transportation system. Still, at the end of the century great expanses of land
in Canada were essentially uninhabited. Lands occupied by 1900 included a
narrow strip along the St. Lawrence River, Montreal and the eastern Great
Lakes, then southern Manitoba, Saskatchewan and southeastern Alberta,
with Winnipeg as a wheat center being the only city of over 100,000 west of
Toronto. (Ref. 151, 8)

We cannot leave the discussion of British Canada without reverting back to
activities connected to the War of 1812 with the United States. As early as
1811 British Canadian officials believed that war was imminent and began
to warn Indians who were friendly to them. Chief among those were the
Shawnees, who were led at that time by the mystic Prophet Tenskwatawa
and the latter mobilized many Ottawas, Potawatomis and Chippewas in the
Lake Michigan region. After some preliminary maneuvering actual land
warfare began with the British and Indian forces defeating the Americans at
the battles of Brownstown, Monguagon and Fort Michilimackinac. On
August 16th Governor William Hull surrendered the American Fort
Dearborn, just 24 hours after Potawatomis had killed most of the garrison.
That winter the Prophet had trouble feeding his people in the Indiana area,
however, and as another American expedition approached, he and most of
his followers fled to Canada.

Knowing that the American Governor Harrison was preparing to recapture
Detroit, the British commander Brigadier General Henry Proctor launched
offensive operations. While ships transported the British regular militia and
artillery across Lake Erie, the Prophet and his brother, Chief Tecumseh, led
almost 1,200 Indians overland to the mouth of the Maumee. The attack
failed and a similar one launched July 21, 1813 also failed. Meanwhile on
Lake Erie, Capt. Oliver Perry's fleet took on the British under Capt. Robert
Barclay and destroyed them in a 3 hour battle at Put-in-Bay. On land,
Proctor talkea his Indians into withdrawing and preparing for new battle on
the Thames River. In a great battle about 2 miles west of Moraviantown
almost all the British soldiers were killed or captured and the Indians
scattered through the forests. Tecumseh was shot down and the Indian
remnant had only 374 warriors, with about 650 women and children. The
natives spent a miserable winter of 1813-1814 camped at the western end of
Lake Ontario and the British gave them just enough supplies to keep them
from starving.

The war scene then seemed to shift to the Niagra frontier where the Iroquois
were British allies. The Shawnees agreed to join with the Iroquois, but they
arrived a full day after the decisive Battle of Chippewa had ended. For 2
years the British Indian Department had been hard pressed to feed all the
exiles in Canada and they wanted them back in the United States. It was not

until the white immigration into upper Canada occurred in the decade after
the Treaty of Ghent, however, that the embittered Tenskwatawa severed his
ties with the British Indian Department and returned to the United States
where, by 1819, he no longer seemed a threat. (Ref. 293)

THE UNITED STATES

It is not a simple matter to scan the history of the United States in the 19th
century in an outline form. The War between the States seems to make a
natural break-point, with the situations before and after the war quite
different. With this in mind we shall divide this section accordingly.

THE UNITED STATES BEFORE THE CIVIL WAR

THE EAST

Presidential candidates for the election of 1800 were selected by party
caucuses in Congress, with no public electioneering and no speeches or
statements by the candidates. Even so, the politicians managed to make it a
scurrilous campaign with the Republican winner, Jefferson, being accused
of being a Jacobin, an atheist and a French agent. Jefferson himself believed
that his election saved the country from militarism and monarchy. As for
"monarchy", it was Jefferson who founded the "Virginia Dynasty"
consisting of 4 presidents, who reigned for almost a third of a century. Each
of these administrations will be briefly discussed.

THOMAS JEFFERSON ADMINISTRATION (1801-1808) 3rd President

By 1803 a doctor in backwoods Kentucky had vaccinated 500 people for
small-pox. Through the Napoleonic Wars, the United States attempted a
neutrality policy, but she could not avoid some combat with the pirates of
Tripoli between 1801 and 1804, as we noted on page 1051. Meanwhile, the
boundary of the nation went west to the Rocky Mountains through the

purchase of the Louisiana territory from Napoleon for $16,000,000, since
the little emperor was afraid Britain would soon pluck it from him anyway.
But we shall discuss this more in a later paragraph when we outline the
Mississippi valley region. (Ref. 140, 151) Jefferson himself was a most
complex man and we have noted many of his characteristics on page 1028.
A few additional remarks may be of interest here. The existence of his
mulatto children was made public by the journalist James Thomas
Callender in 1802 and again by the New England Palladium in 1805. In the
field of religion, he re-wrote the New Testament, leaving out all mysticism,
Virgin Birth, miracles, etc., entitling the work The Philosophy of Jesus of
Nazareth. It was not published until after his death. As this man and his
party gained power, the New England Federalists and their clergy worried
about terror, atheism and free-love resulting from all this triumph of
democracy. Alexander Hamilton, rising in stature on the political scene,
truly expected Jefferson's regime to end in anarchy like the French Republic
and he was ready to step in as the United States Bonaparte. He was killed in
a duel by Aaron Burr, the vice-president, who was politically dead, himself,
after that duel. Burr, 1806, tried to hatch a conspiracy against the United
States from the region of New Orleans and that lead to a treason charge,
from which he was finally freed by the work of his attorney, John Marshall.
Burr left for Europe, there to try still more conspiracies unsuccessfully and
finally returned to the United States in disguise in 1812. (Ref. 151, 123)

To go back a few years, Jefferson, concerned with the European situation
which saw Napoleon still strong and the British navy supreme, built up the
federal government to cope. But high wages in the United States navy and
merchant marine began to attract deserters from the Royal Navy, so that the
latter soon began to use that as an excuse to stop neutral U.S. ships and
search them for deserters. Such an episode in June 1807, involving the
U.S.S. Chesapeake, brought the new country and Britain to the brink of war.
(Ref. 151)

JAMES MADISON ADMINISTRATION(1809-1815) 4th President

In 1808 Congress had passed a law against the importation of slaves, but it
was not strictly enforced because Eli Whitney's cotton gin initially made

slave labor in the fields seem even more needed. In addition the invention
of the gin introduced the principle of mass production to America, a feature
which led to the Colt revolver, the sewing machine and the flour mill,
revolutionizing the status of human labor, particularly in the western world
and still more especially in the northern states. The north welcomed the
Industrial Revolution while the south rejected it. After Jean Etienne Bore
had demonstrated how to make granulated sugar from cane, a great sugar
empire began to stretch along the Gulf. With the development of a
steamboat which could go upstream against the Mississippi current, the
sugar was sent to St. Louis, Louisville and Cincinnati for refining. (Ref. 39)

Although a great statesman, Madison was a poor politician and as a result
of his ineptitude and Napoleon's maneuverings, difficulties with England
increased. Both French and English navies were seizing and even scuttling
American vessels. In 1811 Madison forbade all intercourse with England
and as Napoleon had closed all Europe to Britain at the same time, it made
for a very bad winter in England. By 1812 the United States and England
were at war.

In the meantime, as the Spanish Empire appeared to be breaking up, the
inhabitants of "West Florida" elected for the United States and were soon
incorporated as the Territory of Orleans (later part of the state of Louisiana.
We must also discuss the Indian situation in the Ohio and Indiana regions at
this time. By 1800 many Indians were ready to try the white man's ways.
Late in 1801 a delegation of chiefs from the Potawatomis, Miamis,
Delawares, Shawnees, Kickapoos and Kaskaskias visited the east and two
of the chief s asked for government assistance. As a result, during that first
decade of the century the federal government and various religious
organizations sent funds, farming implements and advisors to those tribes.
Yet most of the programs were mismanaged and unscrupulous agents even
sold the farm implements to white settlers. But primarily the Indians
themselves could not become adjusted to the new ways. The Shawnees,
early known as the "Southerners" by other Algonquian-speaking peoples
shared the same problems. Branches of this tribe were scattered across the
south, the Gulf Coast, the Delaware Valley, Georgia and South Carolina at
various periods. In this century many were settled in Ohio and Indiana
when the white citizens there declared an "open season" on Shawnee

property. That, along with Shawnee excessive drinking, economic
difficulties and various injustices led to deterioration of relationships. Some
of these Shawnees, including a young prince, Tecumseh, had fought against
the Americans under "Mad Anthony" Wayne at the end of the last century.
Now Tecumseh's brother Tenskwatawa, a Shawnee holy man, sought to
save his people with a new mystic religion. Claiming that he had been
appointed by the Great Spirit he established Prophetstown near where the
Tippecanoe joins the Wabash River, denounced alcohol and polygamy and
set up certain rituals. The future president William Henry Harrison kept
pushing his land acquisitions and further antagonizing various tribes, all of
which soon began to accept the new Shawnee religion and join the groups
at Prophetstown. The Kickapoos, Potawatomis, Ottawas, Chippewas, Crees,
Winnebagos, Sacs, Miamis and Assiniboins were all converts. By 1807
Prophetstown had over 60 cabins and wigwams clustered around a frame
council-house measuring about 150 by 34 feet. William Wells, the Indian
agent at Fort Wayne, warned both then Governor Harrison and the Secretary
of War that the Prophet constituted a serious threat and it was certainly true
that most of these Indians had begun to sympathize more with the British in
Canada than with the "Long Knives" Americans. Only the Shawnee clan led
by Chief Black Hoof remained loyal to the United States. (Ref. 293)

But the Prophet began to have trouble feeding his hordes at his "holy city"
and when the Ottawas and Chippewas near Lake Michigan defected,
Harrison thought that the Shawnee leader was slipping and he made plans
for further land encroachment. In September 1809 he signed a Treaty of
Fort Wayne with Miamis, Delawares and some Potawatomis, obtaining over
3,000,000 acres of land in Indiana and Illinois. The Shawnees were
incensed and Tecumseh set out south to try to gather more of his scattered
kinsmen for a final confrontation. He also visited the British at Malden and,
as we noted on page 1139, the British, foreseeing possible war with the
United States, began to court these Indians, sending them food, arms and
ammunition. Finally in the fall of 1811, after several unsuccessful
conferences, Harrison started north from Vincennes with an army to put an
end to Prophetstown. The famous Battle of Tippecanoe began in the early
morning of November 7, 1811.

"Harrison described the battle as a 'complete and decisive’ American
victory, and three decades later he would gain the presidency as 'Old
Tippecanoe’, a military hero who had soundly beaten the Indians on the
Wabash. But a closer examination of the battle and its outcome indicates
that Harrison's claims were exaggerated. Both white and Indian losses were
much the same. The American force numbered close to 1,000 officers and
men. They suffered 188 casualties, of which at least 62 were fatal. The
number of Indians engaged in the contest is much more difficult to
ascertain, but there were probably between 600 and 700 warriors. Reports
of Indian casualties also vary widely, but probably at least fifty were killed
and seventy were wounded."| footnote |

Quotation from Edmunds (Ref. 293), page 115)

THE WAR OF 1812

War was declared on the basis of the impressment of American seamen,
repeated violations of American territorial rights and alleged blockading of
the American coast. Although New England, where 3/4 of the American
shipping was owned and which supplied most of the seamen, wanted no
part of the war[footnote], the war-hawks thought the fight, if successful,
would result in the conquering of Canada, end the Indian menace and throw
more western land open. Many politicians, including William Henry
Harrison, had already grabbed land in the amount of about 48,000,000 acres
between 1795 and 1809. The belief of many that Britain was behind the
Shawnee Confederacy just described above, helped force the declaration of
war on June 18th. Greatly outnumbered, the one saving fact for the United
States navy vessels was that the Royal Navy was so deeply engaged in war
at the same time with France and could spare only 1 ship of the line, 7
frigates and a number of smaller ships to operate off the American coast.
The British did blockade much of the east coast and there was action, as we
have seen (pages 1139-40) on and around the Great Lakes. The war was
unpopular everywhere, perhaps due to poor leadership from Madison. After
Napoleon's abdication in April, 1814, Britain was able to provide Canada
with an adequate army and things changed rapidly, with the British war
office planning a three pronged invasion attack - at Niagara, Lake
Champlain and New Orleans - as well as raiding at Chesapeake. A British

raiding party did enter Washington, ate at the White House (which Madison
had evacuated) and burned all public buildings of the capitol. Otherwise
execution was poor, however, and the final New Orleans attack was
thwarted by General Andrew Jackson, although unknown to those
participants, the peace had already been signed in Ghent.

When the president ordered the militia of the northern states to the frontiers,
Connecticut and Massachusetts refused to obey. (Ref. 217)

After the war there was a great stimulus to manufacturing and by 1815 there
were 500,000 spindles in operation. The Federalist New Englanders were
actually talking about secession at that time, but the Republicans of the
same area kept the activity under control. Those two parties continued to
struggle for a quarter of a century. (Ref. 151) In 1814 General Andrew
Jackson had defeated the Creeks at Horseshoe Bend near the border of
Georgia and Alabama and so, after his defeat of the British at-New Orleans
in the following year, the United States was well in control of the old
"southwest". (Ref. 151, 39)

JAMES MONROE ADMINISTRATION (1817-1824) 4th President

Except for the Monroe Doctrine, the Supreme Court decisions of Chief
Justice Marshall were the only enduring feature of the new nationalism of
1815 and after. The decisions included the defense of the constitutionality
of the new Bank of the U.S., the right of the Supreme Court to review state
court decisions concerning treaties or laws affecting the nation and finally
the denial of the states to withhold militia from national service when
demanded by the president. Henry Clay and John Calhoun were nationalist
leaders in Congress at that time and both feared sectionalism. A post-war
depression appeared in 1819 and in the recovery period, the question of
slavery arose, with both sides threatening secession. In fear, Congress
passed the Missouri Compromise, in which Missouri was admitted to the
union as a Slave state, but slavery was prohibited thereafter in any area
north of Missouri's southern border, latitude 36~ 30". At the same time,
Maine, which had just detached itself from Massachusetts, was admitted,
thus making 12 free and 12 slave states.

It is appropriate here to return momentarily to the Indian situation in the
southeast United States. In spite of all contact with Christianity the
Southern Indians clung to many of their ancient rituals, especially the
"bush" or annual Green Corn Festival, which lasted for several days after
the new corn ripened and homage was paid to the Sun, Corn and similar
Indian deities. However, many of the Indians and mestizos lived among the
colonists, merged into the white culture and in time forgot their language
and traditions. Genetically they had considerable impact, far more than is
generally realized. After their many troubles more than 500 Creek survivors
congregated in southern Alabama near Atmore, where for decades they
lived near whites and Negroes. Each had its own school system, although
the whites were dominant and discriminated against both ~he other groups.
But mixing was considerable and today many of the "whites" in this area
are in part Creek. All Indians were not exterminated by disease, warfare or-
the later transfer west. In part they remained in the south, partly absorbed
and helping to create 1 9th century "Negroes". Even Alex Haley, author of
Roots, has Indian forebears. In the 1920s the anthropologist Melvill
Herskovits made a random anthropometric survey of students at Howard
University in Washington D.C. and of a selected groups of Negroes living
in Harlem. One-third of each group displayed physical characteristics of
Indian ancestry. In 1947 the historian August Meier made a genealogical
survey of Negro college students in the southern heartland of Mississippi
and adjoining states. On a large sample, 70% had Indian

ancestors| footnote]. Thus right (Ref. 267) feels that the American black is
not an African black but actually a new race. It is difficult to determine the
extent of Indian blood in the American Negro because one does not have
any of the Timucuans, Stonos, Occaneechees and other extinct tribes to
study and present day Powhatans and Cherokees are not the same as those
found at the time of first white contact.

These remarks are taken from Wright (Ref. 267), pages 250 and 251)

In the United States early the word "slave" became synonymous with
"black", "African" or "nigger" and since there were many Indian slaves,
they were of ten subject to the same names and, in fact, considered the
same. Actually genetically the southern Negro was a product of Africans,
whites and Indians. After slave importation from Africa was outlawed and
Indian slave raids in the South had become relatively insignificant, the

percentage of males among those races of the south changed. The male
Africans decreased in percentage while the male Indians increased. The
famed Seminole Chief Osceola's spouse, or at least one of them, in all
probability was a Negro and his father in all likelihood was white. A
physical anthropologist who has examined Osceloa's bones has speculated
that he had African forebears as well. Many modern Negroes are doubtless
correct in claiming direct descent from that great Seminole warrior. As the
Cherokees became increasingly cultured, they adopted white attitudes
toward Negroes, but it was different among the Seminoles. Both slave and
free Africans lived among them and indeed were a part of the Seminoles
and their presence became more conspicuous during the 19th century
Seminole wars. In 1818 General Andrew Jackson stormed into Spanish
Florida and his major objective was Bowlegs Town, a sizable Negro
settlement on the Suwannee River. (Ref. 267)

As Monroe's Secretary of State, in December, 1823, John Quincy Adams
insisted that the president issue what became known as the Monroe
Doctrine. As a warning to European pawers who might have designs on any
of the new central and south American governments and to Russia, who
was claiming new territory on the Canadian coast, the doctrine may be
summarized as follows:

1. The American continent was not to be considered as subject for future
colonization by European powers
2. The U.S. would not interfere with any existing European colonies

JOHN QUINCY ADAMS (1825-29) A minority president

Adams was a great patriot and wanted to use federal revenue to increase the
navy, build national roads and canals, send out scientific expeditions and
establish institutions of learning and research, but most of these things were
not to materialize for some years to come.

ANDREW JACKSON (OLD HICKORY) (1829-37) 6th President and MARTIN VAN BUREN (1837-41) 7th President

This was the era of the great political figures - Adams, Clay, Webster, Van
Buren and Calhoun, and it marked the beginning of the modern Democratic
political party. The Adams - Jackson political campaign of 1828 was the
most degrading experience of an election that the United States had
experienced. Jackson was ill-educated, intolerant and rough, yet professing
the principles of the Declaration of Independence and devoted to the union.
Jacksonian democracy was the upsurge of a new generation of recently
enfranchised voters against a somewhat ossified Jefferson Republican party.
(Ref. 151) Jackson Democrats believed in equality only for white men and
they introduced the spoils system into federal government, catered to
mediocrity and diluted politics with the incompetent and the corrupt. The
jackass as a symbol of the Democratic party was first used by the opposing
Whigs as a Satire on the supposed ignorance of "Old Hickory". Two vital
issues of that time were:

1. Nullification. First set forth in the Exposition of 1828 by the
legislature of South Carolina, this stated that each state had the right to
judge when its "agent", the federal government, exceeded its powers
and then to take measures to prevent enforcement within state limits.
Calhoun was the secret author. Jackson threatened the use of army and
navy in a showdown in 1833 and South Carolina backed down

2. The Bank of the United States. Jackson forced the demise of the
previously well run U.S. Bank by denying it government funds. Local
banks, released from control, increased paper credit for speculation in
western lands and shortly there- after the financial panic of 1837 burst
upon the country. Van Buren, a shrewd, able and dignified president
spent the whole of his administration developing a substitute for the
Bank of the United States. He was also the principal architect of the
modern American political party

Andrew Jackson hated the British and all Indians, due to several
unfortunate incidents in his childhood. It was an almost foregone
conclusion, therefore, that when the whites wanted more land for cotton in
the south that Jackson should outlaw the tribal kingdoms of the Choctaws,
Creeks, Chickasaws and Cherokees in Mississippi, Alabama and Georgia.
The Indians appealed to the Supreme Court and Chief Justice John Marshall
upheld their claim, but Jackson paid no attention and ordered the army "to

get them out". 30,000 of those Indians were driven, one way or another on
the "Trail of Tears" to Oklahoma and one quarter of them died on the trip.
(Ref. 151, 39) The common impression that after the 1830s all Southern
Indians had been either killed or removed to Oklahoma is misleading,
however, because some 74,000 are still present in the South today, living in
loose, ill-defined clusters, such as the Creeks around Poarch, Alabama and
the Lumbees south of Fayetteville, North Carolina or on reservations. It was
during Jackson's administration that the Second Seminole War was fought
in 1835. Abolitionists charged that this was really not an Indian but a Negro
war, resulting from southern white determination to capture and enslave
Negro-Seminoles. Many parallels exist between the maroon wars in
Jamaica (see page 1035) and the several Seminole wars fought in Florida,
Georgia and Alabama. (Ref. 267) Additional Notes

WILLIAM HENRY HARRISON & JOHN TYLER (1841-1845) Whig party

We have previously noted that Harrison was elected, in great part, on the
basis of his questionable victory over the Indians at Tippecanoe. (See pages
1143-44). Upon Harrison's early death, his vice-president, John Tyler,
succeeded to the presidency, both of them representing those old Jefferson
Republicans who would not follow Jackson. They were helped by a few
remnants of the old Federalists.

The next several presidents of the eastern establishment contributed few
major policies or advancements to the nation. JAMES K. POLK (1845-49),
a Democrat, did bait Mexico in order to win California. This will be
discussed in a later section on "Texas and Mexican War". He was followed
by GENERAL ZACHARY TAYLOR, (1849-50), a Whig whose chief fame
was that he was president during the period of the California gold rush,
which will also be described later. MILLARD FILMORE, (1850-53) was a
Whig who became president upon Taylor's death and signed the
compromise bill admitting California and Texas as states and the
organization of New Mexico and Utah as territories free to enter the Union
without reference to slavery. His administration was the last of the Whig
party, as FRANKLIN PIERCE (1853-57) was then elected as a Democrat.
During his administration, Daniel Webster was Secretary of State and it was

the time of the Kansas-Nebraska Bill, which will be mentioned in a later
paragraph. JAMES BUCHANAN was elected for one term as a Democrat
in 1857 and slavery was the real issue of that campaign as the slave trade
continued, even though it had been illegal since Fillmore's administration.
Between 1840 and 1847 some 440,000 slaves were illicitly exported to the
United States, Cuba and Brazil. In 18 months of 1859 and 1860 some 85
slave ships were fitted out in New York City, alone. (Ref. 151)

We have very briefly covered the political and governmental situation up to
the time approaching the Civil War, but we need to find out more about how
people lived in that time. Cholera ravaged the entire country three times in
this century and yellow fever hit the northeast early and then the southern
and Gulf of Mexico ports, with a peak in 1860. (Ref. 125) Northern U.S.
society experienced the industrial revolution, cheap transportation,
educational and migratory movements and those things influenced the
border states somewhat, but the lower south was entirely apart, as was the
far west and the southwest. Thus we shall now discuss the various parts of
the country separately.

First the north. This was a busy age, with every northern community a
human ant-hill of activity. Most white workers still worked 63 hours a week
and 18% of all children were still employed. Everything was business, there
were no public parks or pleasure resorts, few games or sports. Sculling in
the eastern harbors was the only competitive sport, trotting horse races
about the only entertainment. As early as 1856 there were 38 trotting
courses of national repute in the northern area. Medicine was bad and
anyone wanting a good medical education had to go to Austria or France.
Tuberculosis, cholera, typhus and yellow fever killed thousands. Dr. Oliver
Wendell Holmes did write on puerperal fever in 1842, antedating
Semmelweis by 4 years, but few believed him. Dr. William W. Gerhard of
Philadelphia did a fine study of cerebral meningitis in 1834 and later
distinguished typhus and typhoid fevers. Dr. Crawford W. Long of Georgia,
in 1842 and Dr. W.T.C. Morton of Massachusetts, in 1846 successfully used
ether for anesthesia. Dr. Philip Physick of Philadelphia established surgery
as a specialty and the American Medical Association was founded in 1847.

City water systems and sanitation were crude or absent. Philadelphia
pioneered with pumping water from the Schuylkill River and by 1830 could
deliver 6,000,000 gallons of water daily. But Chicago, owing to difficulty of
drainage, had practically no plumbing until 1861. Boston, with a population
of 165,000 in 1857 had only 6,500 toilets, of which 8, in the basement of
the Tremont House, served 200 to 300 guests. Illuminating gas was fairly
common by 1860 and 337 cities had it piped in from central plants using
coal. Although the district of Michigan only had 31639 people in 1832,
there were 940 miles of post roads. (Ref. 151, 217)

Immigr2tion from Europe accelerated. In the 1830s there were 540,000
newcomers with 44% Irish, 30% German and 15% English, but by 1840 the
number rose to 2,814,554 in the following decade. Almost all arrived and
stayed in the north and almost all became Jackson Democrats through the
planned manipulations of the party hacks. Irish immigrants comprised 34%
of all voters in New York City in 1855, but they contributed little to
American economic or intellectual life. Ugly racial and religious riots arose
in the eastern cities at least once every decade.

The factory system for cotton spinning and weaving became well
established in New England, so that by 1840 there were 1,200 cotton
factories, operating 2,250,000 spindles in the United States, 2/3 of these in
New England. By 1850 there were over 1,500 woolen mills. These and
other mills were operated largely by water power. In 1860 manufacturing
produced $1,000,000,000. The iron industry developed very slowly. It has
been written that the Atlantic towns heated their houses with coal brought
3,000 miles from England rather than by wood from their own forests 30
miles away, because sea transportation was that much cheaper than
overland. Steam-ships were not in use at the time of those comments. (Ref.
213, 260) Still there were hard times between 1837 and 1841 and westward
migration accelerated. Canal and railroad construction created a demand for
cheap labor and made it easier for people to reach the west. The-states built
their own canals, roads and railroads. Ohio linked the Great Lakes with the
Mississippi valley; the Erie canal connected Buffalo to New York City.

By 1820 New York State's population of 1,372,812 was in first place and
the increase in inhabitants of New York City was phenomenal. By 1850

there were 515,547 people in the city proper plus 96,838 in Brooklyn.
Fortunes were accumulated there, but culture was deficient. Columbia
University, the only college present until 1831, graduated only about 24 a
year. New York University and Fordham added a very few more after 1841.
Upstate New York, however, was well provided with denominational
colleges. The most original contribution to higher education was Rensselaer
Polytechnic Institute, founded at Troy in 1824, the precursor of all the
subsequent engineering and technical universities. An interesting aside is
the final disposition of the great Dutch estates along the Hudson. Their
lands had been rented out in an old feudal type system that involved
peculiar considerations. With the death of Stephen Van Rensselaer, "the last
patroon" in 1839, a rebellion broke out among his renters, when his sons
tried to collect thousands of dollars of back rent. This forced New York
legislation modifying the rent and lease laws and systems. Intellectuals of
New York State were plentiful, including Clement C. Moore, Professor of
Hebrew and Greek, who wrote "The Night Before Christmas"; William
Cullen Bryant, America's greatest poet; Edgar Allen Poe; Henry W.
Longfellow and Nathaniel Hawthorne. The artist Colonel John Trumbull of
Connecticut painted the "Declaration of Independence" and "Battle of
Bunker Hill". John Lloyd Stephens founded American archeology after
trips to the old Maya scenes in Central America and Yucatan.

In other fields, Abbe Sicard established the first American school for the
deaf at Hartford and Samuel Howe and Michael Anagnos founded the
Perkins Institute for the blind. Women's suffrage movements were initiated
as early as 1848. Many "isms" appeared, not the least of which was Joseph
Smith's Mormon faith. In 1836 Emerson published "Essay on Nature",
opening the period of transcendentalism, a belief in the divinity of human
nature. In the same generation there were Hawthorne, Thoreau and the
Alcotts.

By 1850 there had been formulated three basic principles of education:

1. Free primary and secondary schools should be available for all
children
2. teachers should have professional training

3. all children should be required to attend some school- up to a certain
age

By 1840 over 150 small denominational colleges were in existence in the
country. American science soon became specialized. Joseph Henry
discovered the electromagnet and many other features of electricity and
Samuel F.B. Morse used the former to develop the telegraph. Charles
Goodyear had patented the vulcanization of rubber by 1844. The
Smithsonian Institute was started in 1846 with Joseph Henry as its first
director. Only astronomy lagged and this was due to the effect of organized
religion, which considered probing the heavens with a telescope as mildly
blasphemous.

And now we must consider life in the American south. We have already
discussed the Indian-Negro situation at some length on pages 1115 and
1116. "Cotton was king in the south from 1815 to 1861, and the principle
bulwark of his throne was Negro slavery"[footnote]. By 1860 the crop was
almost 2,300,000,000 pounds, accounting for 2/3 of the total exports of the
United States and 5/6 of the world's production. In that harvest 4,000,000
slaves were used. A prime field hand 18 to 25 years old was worth $500 in
1832 and $1.300 just before the panic of 1837, although their yearly
maintenance cost only $15 to $60. Morison (Ref. 151) says that 13% of all
Negroes in the U.S. in 1860 were mulattoes, but as we have seen, later
writers might put this much higher, especially if one adds in Indian blood.
The south was ruled by a few but strong classical southern gentlemen, of
which only a few descended from the colonial aristocracy. The great mass
of wealthy planters by 1860 were self-made men like Jefferson Davis,
whose parents had lived in log cabins. There were probably fewer than
15,000 families of the southern white gentry and most of the white
southerners were small farm owners. The latter were actually the governing
class in Alabama, Mississippi and Arkansas. About half the cotton crop was
made by those who owned from 1 to 6 slaves. Whites were forbidden to
teach slaves to read and write in every southern state except Maryland,
Kentucky and Tennessee. (Ref. 151) In contrast to this slavery in America
we should recall that although slavery was almost universal in more ancient
times, the slaves then were of the same race as their masters, of ten the
better educated and usually could work or buy their way out of slavery

eventually. In the U.S., slavery was fatally united with the permanent,
physical fact of color. (Ref. 217) A slave rebellion led by Nat Turner in
Virginia in 1831 resulted in the deaths of 57 whites and perhaps up to 100
Negroes before it could be put down by regular troops and navy personnel.
Elsewhere in America slaves were being freed, in the British colonies in
1833, the French Antilles in 1848 and the Spanish republics in turn between
1813 and 1854. Only in a few Spanish and Dutch islands, the United States
and Brazil did slavery continue after 1854. Some effort had been made to
return blacks to Africa by the American Colonization Society, but by 1855
only 3,600 had been sent. This did help the Republic of Liberia to form a
constitution patterned on the U. S. model, however, in 1857.

Quotation from Reference 151, page 500

There was little literary, scientific or artistic production from the prewar
south, with the exception of some outstanding "firsts" in medicine. Ephraim
McDowell (trained at the University of Edinburgh) developed an
international reputation in abdominal surgery, while J. Marion Sims,
practicing in Alabama, laid the basis for the specialty of gynecology. As
noted previously, Dr. Crawford Long of Georgia used ether for anesthesia in
1842, but he did not publicize his discovery for several years. The first
dental school in the world was established in Baltimore in 1839. (Ref. 125)
The south's one scientific achievement was Commander Matthew Fontaine
Maury's Physical Geography of the Sea (1855), which marked him as the
world's greatest oceanographer. Most of the south's energy, however,
seemed to be devoted to backing up John Calhoun's ridiculous pro-slavery
doctrines. Even in religion the southerners were different. Both the southern
divisions of the Methodist and Baptist churches defended slavery. There
were many reasons for the great resistance to the emancipation of the
slaves. We have already noted that the invention of the cotton gin, which
made cultivation of upland cotton by slaves profitable, was one factor.
Jacksonian Democracy was another great influence, because of the rise of
provincial, ill-educated politicians, who catered to the prejudices of the
middle class and poor whites. Instead of preparing the south for the
inevitable emancipation, those men flattered people into the fatal belief in
the righteousness of slavery.

THE MIDDLE WEST AND THE LOUISIANA PURCHASE REGION

In this section we shall be concerned primarily with the territory gained
through the "Louisiana Purchase" and what we currently consider the
Middle West. We have infringed somewhat on this by discussing pre-war
features in Ohio, Indiana and Illinois, but in this 1 9th century it seemed
that those regions were more closely linked with the traditional EAST.

There were many reasons for Napoleon's sale of the Louisiana Territory -
his need for money, his fear that Britain would otherwise soon take it from
him, and his General Leclerc's recent loss of 24,000 men over a 9 month
period to disease and the arms of 500,000 black Haitians, who would not be
enslaved. The legality of the sale was questionable, however, as the area
was still in the hands of Spain, even though the French claimed that Spain
had ceded the area to Napoleon in a secret treaty of 1801. At the time the
contested region was an unmanned, undefended empire with the whole
watershed of the Mississippi and comprising the present states of Louisiana,
Arkansas, Oklahoma, both the Dakotas. Iowa, Nebraska, Kansas,
Minnesota, Colorado, Wyoming and Montana, - that is, one-third of North
America. The sale price of $16,000,000 actually amounted to 4 cents an
acre. After the purchase, President Jefferson then appointed Meriwether
Lewis and William Clark, along with a 16 year old Shoshone Indian girl
and her French-Canadian husband as guides and interpreters, to survey the
new purchase. They left St. Louis in May of 1804. (Ref. 151, 123, 39)

The boundaries of the Louisiana territory were actually very poorly defined
except in the east and south, where the Mississippi and Red rivers
respectively served as "natural barriers". On the west the border was the
Rocky Mountains, whatever line that might indicate, and on the north there
was even less definition, with mention of a border in the vicinity of the
origin of the Mississippi and Missouri rivers. By this century, the Sioux

Indians, who had been in the Michigan region in the early 1 7th century,
then in Minnesota late in that century, had gone on to the Black Hills of
South Dakota in the 18th century, driving out the Cheyenne and the Kiowa.
In this 19th century they inhabited large areas of the north Great Plains and
western prairies of Wisconsin, Iowa, Minnesota, North and South Dakota,
as well as some regions in Canada. There were 7 tribes with a total of about

30,000 people. Like the Shawnees, most of them supported the British in
the War of 1812. Treaties of one sort and another were signed with the
United States in 1815, 1825, and 1851. (Ref. 38)

Even after the United States acquired Missouri in the Louisiana Purchase,
French influence remained dominant in that region. But Americans began to
filter in, particularly in the regions of the lead mines at Ste. Genevieve and
Potosi. By the time of the Lewis and Clark expedition St. Louis was already
notable as the gateway to the Far West. Later St. Joseph, Missouri was the
supply center for the gold rush "49ers" and over 50,000 emigrants went
through that city of only 3,000 permanent people. (Ref. 38, 39) On his
return from Canada the Shawnee Prophet, Tenskwatawa, led his people into
Missouri, but they met some resistance from local tribes and the whites and
late in 1827 they left St. Louis, en route for Kansas. (Ref. 293) We have
mentioned the admission of Missouri as a state of the Union and the politics
involved in the "Missouri Compromise" on page 1145. Settlement
quickened after the 1820s and many German immigrants arrived in the
1840s and 1850s.

In the early century part of the mid-west was not very enticing. De
Tocqueville (Ref. 218) describes all the land which is now Oklahoma,
Kansas, southern Nebraska, the panhandle of Texas and eastern Colorado
and New Mexico as a desert, generally covered with sand incapable of
cultivation’ In the decade following 1821 some 271 steamboats were
launched on the Mississippi and its tributaries. (Ref. 217) The treeless
prairies were not well settled down to 1850, but then new machinery such
as McCormick's mechanical reaper, Marsh's harvester, the steel-toothed
cultivator, etC., along with the rising price of wheat up to $2.50 a bushel in
1855 and the building of railroads into the prairie country, stimulated a
great proliferation of farmers. Politics was involved in the building of the
railroads as well as the bill for the organization of the Great Plains as the
"Territory of Nebraska" in 1854 and Stephen Douglas of Illinois was a
promoter of both. The political issue was again slavery and its relation to
the new Territory and the old Missouri Compromise (see page 1145). The
old "Northwest" seethed with indignation over the Kansas-Nebraska Act
which nullified the Missouri Compromise and was ripe to form a new anti-
slavery party - anew "Republican" one. In Kansas itself, slavery and anti-

slavery immigrants actually came to war, anticipating the Civil War and
federal troops had to restore order. The two contending groups then each
held conventions asking for statehood. The anti-slavery Topeka convention
was rejected by the Senate in 1856 and the Le Compton Constitution was
accepted.

Some of the Creeks, Cherokees and other southern Indians had migrated on
their own to Oklahoma as early as 1818, and then, of course, Andrew
Jackson moved hundreds there during his administration. After the Creeks
had relocated in Oklahoma, supposedly not 1% could prove that they had
no mixed blood. In many instances, this eventually resulted in a reversal of
the old Indian matrilineal society and that created much tension. As early as
1819 the Cherokee Council had specifically prohibited white men from
disposing of their Indian wives' property. (Ref. 267) Settling on the hills and
meadow lands in the eastern section of Oklahoma territory, the so-called
"Five Civilized Tribes"[footnote] formed organized states and communities.
They clashed some with the Plains Indians, particularly the Osage, but they
were pretty well free of white interference before the Civil War.

The Cherokees particularly had a highly Europeanized culture, with a
written language, invented by their great leader Sequoyah, before their
western travels. (Ref. 38) See also pages 1201-1202

THE SOUTHWEST (TEXAS, NEW MEXICO & THE MEXICAN WAR)

In 1805 a "neutral ground" was established as a buffer zone between the
United States and Mexico in the area between the Sabine River in the west
and the Arroyo Hondo, a tributary of the Red River in the east. This soon
became a haven for outlaws. In 1820 New Mexico, which then included
Arizona and Texas, was a frontier province of Mexico and the latter country
encouraged emigration from the United States. In 1821 Stephen F. Austin,
taking over a grant which had been given to his father, settled 300 U.S.
families in the most fertile region of Texas and by 1834 his colony
comprised some 20,000 whites and 2,000 slaves, outnumbering the native
Mexicans in Texas by 4 to 1. By the following year there were 28,000 North
Americans and to these were soon added swashbucklers like Sam Houston,
David Burnet, Branch Archer, Davy Crockett and the Bowie brothers of

long knife fame. When Mexican President Santa Anna proclaimed the
constitution of 1835, sweeping away state rights within the Mexican
domain, the North Americans in Texas, led by Austin, expelled the Mexican
garrison from San Antonio de Bexar and seceded, declaring Texas'
independence. Santa Anna responded by crossing the Rio Grande with
3,000 men, besieging the 200 Texans at the Alamo fortress, killing them all.
Already the colonists had proclaimed an independent Republic of Texas,
elected David Gouverneur Burnet president ad interim and put
Generalissimo Sam Houston in charge of troops. The latter defeated Santa
Anna near the present day city of Houston and after quarreling with Burnet,
he became the next president of the Lone Star Republic, which was
recognized by President Jackson of the U.S. in 1837. The white population
was barely 50,000 and the finances were poor.

Annexation to the United States was a solution to the Texas problems, but
such occurred only after much bickering. It was finally hastily arranged
after influential southern editors and politicians feared that the Republic of
Texas would abolish slavery and they wanted Texas for a slave state, to
balance the northern abolitionist ones. President Tyler arranged the
annexation in 1845. The Mexican War, which broke out shortly thereafter
may have resulted because President James Polk goaded Mexico into war in
order to win California for the U.S. He had tried to buy California,
unsuccessfully, so he took advantage of some debt repudiations by Mexico
to put further pressure on the Mexican government, for collection. At the
same time another Mexican revolution occurred and the new government
there was spoiling for a fight. Polk ordered troops across the Rio-Grande on
January 13, 1846 and the war was on. It had little support in the east but
was popular in the Mississippi Valley, where the army received 49,000
volunteers. In March of 1847 General Winfield Scott landed 3 miles from
Vera Cruz with an army, then marched to Mexico City along the old
Spanish invasion trail and by September Mexico had surrendered. By the
Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo (1848) New Mexico (including most of
Arizona[footnote]) was ceded along with Upper California (including San
Diego) to the United States and the border of Texas was acknowledged at
the Rio Grande. The U.S. assumed the previously disputed, unpaid claims
and paid an additional $15,000,000. (Ref. 151, 198) (See also page 1160 for
New Mex.)

The Hidalgo Treaty described some of the U.S.-Mexico border vaguely, and
in 1853 President Franklin Pierce had James Gadsden purchase an extra
30,000 square miles along southern New Mexico and Arizona south of the
Gila River, for $10,000,000. That area was considered the most practical
route for a southern railroad to the Pacific. This was the "Gadsden
Purchase". (Ref. 38)

THE WEST

The original Oregon Territory included the present day states of Oregon,
Washington and Idaho and the province of British Columbia. The final
border settlement with Great Britain was made in June 1846 under Polk's
administration. Backwoodsmen from Iowa, Missouri, Illinois and Kentucky
made up most of the early white settlers and they were originally led there
by the Rocky Mountain beaver hunters known as "Mountainy men". Indian
troubles occurred from time to time, including the Cayuse War of 1847. The
Cayuse Indians[ footnote], closely associated with the Nez Perce, but
separate, blamed some missionaries for an outbreak of small-pox and killed
those in the mission. The white settlers than declared war and subdued the
Indians, who were placed on a reservation in 1855.

The Cayuse bred a small horse and gave the name cayuse to all Indian
ponies. (Ref. 38)

The Church of Jesus Christ of the Latter-day Saints, commonly called the
Mormon Church, was responsible for settling Utah. Brigham Young, heir to
Joseph Smith, who was murdered in Illinois in 1844, reached Utah with his
followers in 1847. Included were some 4,000 English converts. By 1848
over 5,000 people had arrived and the Utah Territory was organized in 1850
with Young as territorial governor.

The development of Wyoming was closely allied with the fur trade and the
great westward migrations. When John Colter, a trapper in the Wyoming
Mountains, first returned to St. Louis with tales of the great canyons and
steaming geysers of Yellowstone, he was ridiculed. Soon, however, the
"Mountainy men" entered the country and helped establish the western
route to Oregon through South Pass. The trail has hundreds of graves of

those who died in blizzards, from starvation, disease and Indian attacks. In
the first half of the century Colorado, part of the Spanish territory, was
occupied chiefly by Indians, with only the occasional white hunter. The
Comanches, Cheyennes, Arapahos and the Kiowas combined forces in 1840
to combat the invasion of their grounds and the settlement of Colorado by
whites was accompanied by massacres, lootings and subsequent reprisals.

In Arizona the Pima Indians, whose language was of the Uto-Aztecan
linguistic family, were joined early in the century by the Maricopa of the
Hokan-Siouan linguistic stock, along the Gila River. That new alliance
allowed them to severely defeat their old enemy, the Yumas, by 1857. (Ref.
38)

We have mentioned in another connection that the Russians visited San
Francisco in 1806 and that they established a short-lived Fort Ross some
100 miles north of the Golden Gate in 1812. In 1826 Yankees arrived
overland in the persons of Jedediah Smith and his fellow fur trappers, but
colonization remained chiefly Mexican until the 1840s. In 1834 Governor
Figueroa removed the San Francisco Solano mission from Franciscan monk
control and put Mariano Vallejo in charge. Some 250,000 acres of land thus
soon fell to his personal ownership and eventually he had 50,000 cattle,
24,000 sheep and 8,000 horses of which 1,000 were broken to saddle. He
later supported the United States take-over, although he was put in prison
for awhile and lost most of his land.

In 1839 the Swiss John Sutter arrived and established a "kingdom" of New
Helvetia on a large area in the Sacramento valley. In 1836 a group calling
themselves the "Californios" briefly asserted the independence of California
and by 1845 had driven out the last Mexican governor. Led by John C.
Fremont, Americans set up a republic at Sonoma under the Bear Flag. As
news of the U.S.-Mexico war reached there soon afterwards, Commodore
John D. Sloat captured Monterey, the capital, and claimed California for the
United States. As we have seen above, by the Treaty of Hidalgo, this
annexation was made permanent. Even in 1845 almost nothing was known
in the United States about California, except for R.H. Dana's Two Years
before the Mast and J.E. Fremont's Report of the Exploring Expedition to
Oregon and North California. Barely 6,000 whites lived there and the

Indians were weak. In January of the same year of the Hidalgo Treaty, a
workman in the Sacramento Valley discovered gold in Sutter's millrace and
soon the gold rush to the state was on. San Francisco rose in a few months
to a city of 20,000, where eggs sold for $10.00 per dozen. Two years after
the gold discovery, California became a non-slave owning state in a
package deal, which also admitted Texas and formed territories in New
Mexico and Utah. The gold fever was augmented as W.S. Bodie found gold
high in the Sierras at "Bodie" in 1859 and struck it really rich in 1876. By
1880 the town of Bodie was roaring with life and death, with 56 saloons,
12,000 people and 1 killing a day. When gold ran out in 1883, Bodie was
almost abandoned. (Ref. 151, 198, 39)

Before leaving this section on life in the United States west of the
Mississippi before the War between the states, we should give a little
additional information about progress in New Mexico, which was the chief
center of the Mexican-Spanish civilization north of the Rio Grande. Early in
this 19th century, some "North Americans" began to invade the area,
including Lt. Zebulon Pike, who subsequently wrote a book which
stimulated many Missourians to trek to Sante Fe for trade. Between 1824
and 1825 some 25 wagons left Missouri with about $35,000 worth of
merchandise, which was sold in Sante Fe for $190,000,000 in gold. Later
hundreds of wagons made the journey and on the return trip many brought
mules, which later became identified with the state of Missouri. In 1841
Mirabeau Lamar, the second fully accredited president of the nation of
Texas, invited the New Mexicans to join Texas and then raised an army
with which to force the union, but the venture failed. (Ref. 198)

ABRAHAM LINCOLN AND THE WAR BETWEEN THE STATES *** (Page 1202)

Because there were 4 candidates in the election of 1860, Lincoln won only
39% of the popular vote and carried only 2 counties in the south. (Ref. 8)
As soon as he was elected the south rapidly fell prey to its dreamers with
their visions of a great Southern Confederacy expanding around the whole
Gulf and spreading from sea to sea, teeming with culture and trade and
based on slavery. South Carolina declared its independence on the day
before Christmas, 1860 and quickly Alabama, Florida and Mississippi

followed, with Louisiana and Texas joining by February 1, 1861. Those
states formed the Confederate States of America on February 8th, with the
southern Congress electing Jefferson Davis president and Alexander H.
Stephens as vice-president. The Confederacy was based on the two
contentions of states rights and slavery, the former dooming their ability to
wage war successfully and the latter preventing all possibilities of-a foreign
ally. All of this occurred before President-elect Lincoln had even taken off
ice and nothing was done in Washington until 6 weeks into Lincoln's term.
Then multiple attempts at compromise and conciliation were attempted, but
failed. Lincoln renewed his party's pledge to respect slavery in those states
which had it, but would not acquiesce in secession.

The first gun of the Civil War was fired April 12, 1861 as the Confederate
officers started to take Fort Sumter at Charleston, North Carolina. That
firing on the flag was enough to arouse patriotism in the north and then
events moved swiftly. To win, the north had to completely crush the south
and most European experts thought this impossible.

Lincoln's paramount object was to save the Union, not to destroy slavery,
but in the fall of 1862 after General Lee's army had been exhausted and
depleted at Antietam, he did announce his Emancipation Proclamation to
officially free the slaves in the rebel states. The loyal slave states
(Delaware, Maryland, Kentucky, West Virginia and Missouri) only later
freed their slaves by state action.

Mostly boys fought the Civil War, it being almost certain that the majority
on both sides were under 21, many as young as 15. Even the officers were
young, some major generals being in their 20s. At least 540,000 Americans
(population in 1860 was over 31,000,000) lost their lives in or as a result of
that war. The average soldier was sick enough 2 or 3 times each year to be
sent to a hospital, which was of ten a more dangerous place than the
battlefield. Antisepsis was unknown, anesthetics not always available and
abdominal wounds and major amputations meant probable death. The south
had the best medical corps as a result of the work of their capable surgeon-
general, Dr. Samuel Preston Moore, but neither side had an effective
transportation system early and the south never developed one. In the last 2
years of the war the use of anesthetics finally became routine in the

northern armies only. (Ref. 125) The commander of the Confederate Navy
had a son killed in the Union Navy and Mrs. Lincoln's three brothers died
fighting for the south.

In this outline we shall not attempt to record the campaigns and battles of
this war. In spite of a series of costly land campaigns over two years, the
Union won only after the South had been starved by a Union blockade and
split by the Mississippi. The best officers on both sides were West Point
graduates, but Lincoln may have been the best strategist of them all. He
offered command of the Union forces at the beginning to General Robert E.
Lee and Lee was against slavery, but he was a fifth generation Virginian and
felt that he had to stay with his state. Most of the fighting was done in
rough, forested country. Antietam, Gettysburg and Fredericksburg were the
only important battles in open country. General Lee persistently
underestimated the effect of rifle fire over open ground and that is why his
attacks failed at Antietam and Gettysburg. The Union's .58 caliber rifle, 4'
8" long, fired by a percussion cap, could be fired at 3 rounds per minute and
could kill at over 1/2 mile. Mines and submarines were used for defense in
shoal waters. A new innovation was air observation from balloons.

50uthern hopes of a quick victory were based on the expectation that the
North would not f ight and that England, needing cotton, would go to war to
help the South. Both assumptions were in error, although warships for the
Confederacy were built in both British and French ports.

During this war, Lincoln wielded a greater power than any president up to
the time of Franklin D. Roosevelt and in actuality he was a dictator, from
the standpoint of constitutional law. Under one of his proclamations, over
13,000 persons were arrested and confined by military authority for
offenses ranging from theft of government property to treason. Lincoln had
many enemies in the north, ranging from the religious Osgoodites, who
considered him the Beast of the Book of Revelations, to the defeatists
"Copperheads", who only wanted to negotiate and finally the "barnburning"
Knights of the Golden Circle in the middle west. Lincoln also enraged the
Congress by arbitrary acts that went of ten beyond the Constitution or the
authority which Congress felt that he had. Until his death he was never
wildly popular.

Every school child knows of General Lee's surrender to General Ulysses
Grant at Appomattox on April 12, 1865 and of Lincoln's assassination at
Ford's theater on the night of April 1 4th at the hand of an actor, John
Wilkes Booth, declared to be insane. Some southern armies and vessels
surrendered at various times subsequently, the last on November 6th, when
the C.S.S. Shenandoah surrendered to British authorities. (Ref. 151, 39)

Map taken from Ref. 97

THE IMMEDIATE EFFECTS OF THE CIVIL WAR

In the North

Production was stimulated in the north and in Philadelphia alone some 180
factories were built within 3 years. Immigration from Europe increased with
800,000 people coming within 5 years. Labor saving devices invented at
that time, or in general use, included the Howe sewing machine, the Gordon
McKay shoe machine and the mechanical reaper. Pennsylvania oil
production went up to 128,000,000 gallons in 3 years. Ref ining methods
allowed kerosene glass lamps to light American and English farmhouses.
The Homestead Act in 1862 stimulated westward migration and opened up
new prairie farmlands. Great fortunes were started - Armour (meatpacking),
Havemeyer (sugar), Remington (guns), Carnegie (iron and steel), Borden
(milk) and Marshall Field (merchandise). 40,000,000 bushels of wheat and
flour were exported in 1861. New states were added during and after the
civil conflict. (See map on previous page). Some 15 new colleges were
established, including Vassar, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, La
Salle, Cornell and Swarthmore. At the end of the war, after the Confederate
General Early had raided up to within sight of the capitol, there was
inflation and paper dollars fell 2/3 in value-and the cost of living soared.

In the South

The war effort absorbed all. Transportation was wanting so that food and
supply distribution was very bad, both during and af ter the war. Some areas
starved, while others still had plenty. Texas was geographically removed
from it all and uninvaded (except by Comanches) until 1865. Luxuries were
imported from Mexico.

THE RECONSTRUCTION PERIOD. 1865 - 1877

There was an extremely rapid demobilization of Union forces and,
amazingly, generalized acceptance of the war 's result by the south. Of
several thousand southerners who refused to return to allegiance to the
nation, a large part went to Texas, with a few to Europe, Brazil and Mexico.
Reconstruction is still a controversial subject in American history, of ten
distorted by emotion. Still it was a deplorable and tragic period. For up to
three years no compulsion was put on the southern states to enfranchise the
Negro, but during that time nothing was done to prepare him for citizenship
either and much was done to humiliate him and keep him "down". In spite
of the stereotype picture of the northern Republicans beating and robbing
the south, in actuality millions of dollars of northern money poured into the
south for food, education and various charities. Congress, too performed
wonders in relief, but not in racial adjustments. President ANDREW
JOHNSON appointed provisional civil governors in every former
Confederate state where Lincoln had not already done so. The South
replaced slavery with the "Black Codes", which everywhere kept the Negro
a second class citizen.

In March, 1867, by Act of Congress, military rule replaced the civil
administrations of the rebel states. The Union military enrolled a new
electorate and proceeded to set up reconstructed state governments. This
was accomplished by 1870. Those radical governments persisted in some
states for up to 8 years - Louisiana, Florida and Texas - and while they were
infamous for some types of corruption, they also accomplished some good
legislation that resulted in rebuilding schools, roads, railroads, etc. But
overall, those governments were bad and in the end neither the freed
Negroes nor the Republican party profited.

More disgraceful activities followed - the impeachment of President
Johnson| footnote] and the rise of the Ku Klux Klan.

Fortunately the Senate, organized as a court under the Chief Justice, failed
to convict Johnson and he remained in office

The election of the war hero, GENERAL ULYSSES S. GRANT to the
presidency started a dynasty of Republicans, which lasted almost to the end
of the century. Unfortunately, below the presidency the corruption of the
party was abominable. The Civil War, like every other war, had broken
down morals and everyone was out to "make a fast buck". In addition stock
speculation, over-rapid expansion of the agricultural west and a world-wide
drop in prices brought on the panic of 1873 and a depression which lasted 3
years. Corruption and boss rule continued throughout the century. (Ref. 39)

EXPANSION, DEVELOPMENT, AND SOCIAL CHANGES IN THE LAST 30 YEARS OF THE 19TH CENTURY

An interesting feature of the last half of the century was the development of
the Mormon culture in Utah. When Brigham Young had arrived in that area
in 1841 it was the northern-most province of Mexico. The Mormons found
a desert and made it over into one of the most fertile areas of the west and
for many years they kept to themselves and practiced their religion, which
included polygamy. When PRESIDENT GROVER CLEVELAND signed
the act which made Utah the 45th state in the 1890s, however, polygamy
had to stop. Some of the Mormons migrated to northern Mexico, rather than
live under the Union's laws. (Ref. 39)

During the period from 1850 to 1870 the high plains states and the Rocky
Mountain areas enjoyed a very moist period, but that was followed by
decades of drought, with a great reduction of grass. That had a serious
effect on the cattle herds, with a drastic reduction in numbers and it would
have been the same for the buffalo herds, reducing them by 50 to 70%, even
if they hadn't been over hunted. The Sioux Indians of the Dakotas, who
were originally farmers, only became buffalo hunters shortly before their
extermination late in this century. The buffalo herds were cut in two by the
railroad as it went west in the late 1860s. Up to the time of the Civil War,
the eastern (Union Pacific) railroad went only to Council Bluffs, Iowa and

there was a Central Pacific RR running north and southwest of the Sierras.
In 1866 Congress allowed the two commercial companies to build, one
from each direction, and meet wherever they chanced. For a single mile of
track they needed 40 cars to carry 400 tons of rail and timber (for- ties,
bridges, etc.), fuel and food. The Central Pacific had to get its materials,
except for timber, by sea - some 12,000 miles around Cape Horn. Eastern
work gangs were chiefly new immigrants, mainly Irish, using plenty of
whiskey, while the western crews were primarily Chinese, needing tea.

The United States government gave the companies a subsidy of $16,000 per
mile of track on the prairie and $48,000 per mile in the mountains. The two
tracks met at Promontory Point, Utah on May 10, 1869. In the first 2
decades of operation, freight rates were lowered 500% and travel time
reduced by 900%. By 1890 the rail network was larger than in all Europe,
including the British Isles and Russia. (Ref. 175, 62, 39, 8)

In 1867 at the end of a spur railroad line, Joseph McCoy bought the town of
Abilene, Kansas for $5 an acre and then spent $5,000 for various kinds of
promotions to get cattle there from Texas for shipment east. The result was
the Chisholm Trail, beginning in south Texas near the Gulf and going
through Oklahoma to Abilene. At the end of the Civil War, herds of 2,000
to 3,000 head of long-hormed cattle moved regularly up this trail, from the
matrix of some 3,000,000 of those cattle in Texas. Their ancestors had been
brought over in the second voyage of Columbus. A good drive to Kansas
was completed in three months. In the first 4 years McCoy shipped over
2,000,000 cattle out of his stock yards, greatly exceeding even his own
boasts and it is probable that this was the origin of the expression "the real
McCoy". In the 1860s and 1870s there were multiple cowtowns with
cowboys, claim jumpers, fugitives, prostitutes and the natural enemies -
cattlemen and sheep men. The death rate in those cow towns was
proportionately 10 or 20 times as high as New York City today. Some of the
mining towns were even worse. But the Great Plains, finally cleared of
Indians and buffalo, were open for cattle. Between 1860 and 1880 even
Kansas increased its cattle herds 16 fold and Nebraska by 30 times. In 1886
Wyoming had 9,000,000 cattle, although many owners went broke in the
financial panic of 1885-87) (Ref. 39, 211)

In 1840 it took 233 man-hours of work to grow 100 bushels of wheat, but in
1920 it took only 80 man-hours. Part of that was due to the great increase in
the number of draft horses, rising from 6,200,000 in 1850 to over
15,500,000 by 1900. American grain sent to Europe was cheaper than that
grown locally and European agriculture was disrupted.

One result of that was Norwegian emigration to America. Social changes
were in part related to various immigration patterns. The proportion of
British Isle immigrants fell from 45% in 1861-1870 to 18% in 1891-1900
while that of - Russians and southern Europeans rose from 0.1% to 50% in
the same period. Most of the newcomers went to the northeast so that in
1900 86% of the foreign-bom were in states north of the Ohio River and
east of the Mississippi.

The first significant labor organization was the "Knights of Labor", founded
in 1869 and winning the first railroad strike in 1884. Marxists and
anarchists started other unions, with the latter fanning the infamous
Haymarket Square riot in 1886, as part of a Chicago strike. In 1886 Samuel
Gompers founded the American Federation of Labor, which gradually
succeeded the Knights as the spearhead of the American Labor movement.
(Ref. 211, 151)

We have previously mentioned the Homestead Law of 1862 by which
anyone could obtain 160 acres of western land by agreeing to work it and
produce a crop within 5 years. This was made possible by three agricultural
advancements, the windmill, a special plow[ footnote] for caked prairie soil
invented by John Deere and barbed wire, which would keep cattle out. Of
course the latter, in itself, provoked seemingly endless atrocities and battles
between the farmers and the scandalized cattlemen. But in the final
analysis, transportation was the key to the development of the west. By the
end of the century more than 175,000 miles of railroad track had been laid,
the Pullman sleeping car had been invented, along with the Westinghouse
brake and refrigerator car. The Union Pacific, Central Pacific, Northern
Pacific, Southern Pacific and the Santa Fe railroads were all aided by
government grants and were well established in this period. The terminals
of these lines - Omaha. Kansas City, Oakland, Portland, Seattle and Tacoma
- all became metropolitan cities within 30 years, while the populations of all

the western states increased by 5 to 10 fold. Of course Chicago, a terminal
not only for railroads but also for river and lake traffic from the Great Lakes
region, became one of the busiest trade centers of the world.

This plow had a revolving blade, which turned the very hard soil

Alexander Graham Bell invented the telephone in 1876 and Thomas A.
Edison the incandescent light bulb in 1879. By 1885 the Bell Telephone
Company had over 134,000 subscribers in the United States. Shipping
tonnage on the Great Lakes increased from 100,000 in 1865 to 25,000,000
in 1901, with wheat and iron forming the chief cargoes. Pittsburgh became
the center of the northern Appalachian coal fields and Birmingham,
Alabama the hub of the southern Appalachian fields. Steel production
reached 10,000,000 tons by 1900, outstripping the British output, yet farm
products still greatly exceeded those of industry.

But over-production of goods and raw materials, over-capitalization of
railroads and feverish speculation in securities brought financial panics in
1873 and 1893. After the latter, particularly, there were labor strikes with
terrible violence. Trusts were formed, including the railroads and there were
some very questionable business practices. The Interstate Commerce Act of
1887 was the federal government's first attempt to regulate the railroads and
break up the trusts. The first ready-made plates for use in photography were
developed in the 1880s and Henry Ford made his first twin-cylinder, water-
cooled, 25 mile an hour car in 1896, although mass production did not
materialize until after the turn of the century. (Ref. 213)

In spite of the financial panic of 1873, factories tripled their output between
1877 and 1892 so that the United States became the leading industrial
power of the world. The panic of 1893 occurred when the Democratic Party
was in power, and it subsequently became stigmatized as the party of
depression. Born as the son of a poor weaver in Scot- land, Andrew
Carnegie went from oil to building to buying up iron and steel mills and
then to railroads and steamship lines. His monopoly of steel helped him to
weather the 1892-3 depression and 9 years later he sold his steel interests
out to the United States Steel Corporation for $250,000,000, after which he
started his career of fabulous philanthropy. (Ref. 8, 151)

A major step in medicine occurred with the establishment in 1893 of the
Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, with a remarkable faculty,
which included the pathologist William H. Welch who was among the first
to introduce microscopy and bacteriology into the country, the great
clinician William Osler and surgeon William S. Halsted. Within a few years
Hopkins' former students and professors carried the Hopkins' system to all
parts of the United States. (Ref. 125)

On the political scene, RUTHERFORD B. HAYES was announced
president in a disputed election by action of the National Electoral
Commission by a strict party vote. Hayes refused to run again in 1880 anda
"dark horse" GENERAL JAMES A. GARFIELD ran away with the
nomination and finally the election. On his death by assassination 4 months
later, his vice-president, CHESTER ARTHUR assumed office. Reform in
the civil service commission regulation was made by law in 1883. Overall,
some believe Arthur's was the best Republican administration between
Lincoln and Theodore Roosevelt, but in the 1884 election, the Democrat
GROVER CLEVELAND won the office. But Cleveland made many
enemies, being rude to the press, offending Union veterans, vetoing
hundreds of pension bills and trying to stop the "free coinage" of silver
under the Bland-Allison Act. Cleveland lost the next election (1888) to the
Republican BENJAMIN HARRISON, who made a dignified but ineffective
president and his Congress wanted no legislation other than raids on the
treasury and hold-ups of the consumer. As a result, Cleveland was returned
for a second term in the elections of 1892. There followed the worst
industrial depression since the 1870s. It was a period of soup kitchens,
ragged armies of unemployed and desperate strikes. The party in power is
always blamed for all hard times, so in 1894 the Republicans won again,
with WILLIAM McKINLEY defeating the "boy orator of the Platte",
William Jennings Bryan.

THE SPANISH-AMERICAN WAR

In 1897 Cuba was in revolt against Spain's inept rule and American
journalists, such as William Randolph Hearst and Joseph Pulitzer, in a race
for circulation, played up some atrocities and Cuban concentration camps in

the American press. Soon there was a cry to "do something" about Cuba.
Just as anew Spanish premiere did promise Cuba a measure of home rule
and reform, however, the U.S.S. Maine battleship was mysteriously blown
up in Havana harbor, with heavy loss of life. The clamor for war with Spain
then became more than the weak President McKinley could stand and in
place of accepting a peacef ul solution already offered by Spain, which even
included ceding Cuba to the U.S., McKinley allowed Congress to declare
war in April of 1898. The American fleets immediately went to work, with
one Atlantic squadron blockading Havana and another protecting the U.S.
coast. Commodore Dewey took the Pacific fleet into Manila Bay in the
Philippines and without losing a single man reduced the Spanish fleet there
to junk. The obsolete Spanish vessels there were no match for the newer
American ships. Even so, the United States Naval bombardments in both
Manila and the later Santiago Bay of Cuba, proved embarrassingly
inaccurate, leading to a world-wide effort to improve long-range gunnery.
(Ref. 279) After 10 weeks of fighting the U.S. had wrested an American
empire from Spain. The ground war to "save Cuba" was a popular one, but
sad because of lack of preparedness of the continental forces. For every one
of the 289 men killed in battle, 13 men died of disease. If the Spanish forces
had been in any way organized and reasonably led, the ragged U.S. forces
could never have invaded the island, but they did. Then when the Spanish
navy sailed out of Santiago Bay to be destroyed by the guns of Admiral
Sampson's Atlantic squadron in July of 1898 the war was over. At the
formal Treaty of Paris in the fall of that year, both Cuba and Porto Rico, as
well as the Philippines, became U.S. possessions. For the latter, this country
did give Spain $2,000,000.

THE INDIAN PROBLEM IN THE LAST HALF OF THE CENTURY

By way of recapitulation we should mention that many Indian problems
began after the United States acquired Florida through the treaty ratified in
1821. Then Monroe's bowing to the demands of land craving "westerners"
and Jackson's follow-up policies resulted in the attempt to remove all
Indians to regions west of the Mississippi. This began in the old
"Northwest" and the lower South. We have seen that the Seminoles of
Florida refused to move and under the leadership of Osceola, retreated to

the fastness of the everglades, where they remain in some 200,000 acres of
swampland today. The only "western" statesman to denounce these shabby
activities was Henry Clay. From 1853 to 1856 there were 52 treaties signed,
mostly with Indian nations west of the Mississippi, resulting in the addition
of 174,000,000 acres to the national domain. There were 200,000 Indians
between the Mississippi and the Rocky Mountains at the beginning of the
century.

The Indian story of the second half of the century, however, is that of the
Great Plains tribes and their attempts to prevent white settlements. The
Sioux, Blackfoot, Crow, Cheyenne, Arapaho, Nez Perce[footnote],
Comanche, Apache, Ute and Kiowa were all well armed and had swift
horses. The universal Indian sign language only became manifest at that
time on the Great Plains, when tribes speaking different languages had to
communicate and collaborate, although it had actually originated at an
earlier date among the Westos, Shawnees and other Southern Indians. (Ref.
267) The wanton destruction of the buffalo, the Colt six-shooter and the
white man's diseases were all fatal to the plains Indians. United, these
Indians might have been invincible, but they were themselves divided and
were defeated piecemeal, although at times the Indians seemed to be
winning. When 60,000 Texans went to the Confederate army, it left scarcely
27,000 men behind to defend the entire state and the Comanches and
Kiowas, among others, turned central Texas into a disaster area. This
occurred even after prospectors in the 1849 gold rush had brought cholera
to those tribes as they poured through their territories. Some of the tribes
lost 50% of their people. The Comanches, who had gone south from
Wyoming about 1700, were excellent horsemen, led by Quanah Parker in
the late 1860s. Parker was never actually defeated in battle, but in 1875 he
gave up his wars and accepted reservation life, leading the last of his
Kwahadie clan and their 1,500 horses to Fort Sill, Oklahoma. He later
became a business man, leasing land to Burk Burnett, Dan Waggoner and
others in north Texas. But he also proselytized the peyote cult, which
became known as the focus of the native American church. (Ref. 294)

The French-Canadians named these Indians Nez Perce because they pierced
their noses for wearing shell ornaments. (Ref. 294)

The various tribes occupied and roamed over large territories at times and it
will be easier to discuss them by tribes, rather than narrowly by regions.
The Shoshones of Wyoming territory were linguistically and culturally
related to the Utes and Paiutes and were actually great warriors against their
Indian enemies (Sioux, Crows, Blackfoot, Cheyenne and Arapahos), but
they made friends with the whites of the Lewis and Clark Expedition and
later helped the Mormons to make safe passage. Fort Washakie was named
after the great Shoshone chief. The Blackfoot occupied part of Wyoming
and Montana territory, while the Nes Percel were primarily in Idaho. The
Utes, some of whom were also friendly to whites, were primarily in
Colorado, where there were no U.S. forts.

The Cheyenne and Sioux were more widely distributed, with the later
especially spread from the Dakota territory through Montana, Wyoming and
Nebraska. The U.S. had many forts in those areas, including Forts Buford,
Abraham Lincoln, Yates, Meade and Randall in the Dakota Territory, Fort
Kearney in Nebraska and Fort Ellis in Montana. Chief Sitting Bull was a
Hunkpapa Sioux band warrior and Crazy Horse was an Oglala Sioux. In the
1 ,860s Washington gave the Hunkpapas a large reservation (along with
some Cheyenne and Arapaho clans) encompassing the entire western 1/2 of
South Dakota and the Powder River country to west of the Big Horn
Mountains to be unceded Indian Territory, off limits to all white people.
This was the Treaty of Laramie. But the Northern Pacific Railroad went
through then and Lt. Col. George Armstrong Custer was sent with
reconnaissance guards. He reported that there was gold in the Black Hills,
sacred to the Sioux. By 1875 there were over 1,000 prospectors there and
Washington took away the unceded land. But Chief Sitting Bull ignored
orders to go to a reservation. Consequently in 1876 three columns of army
were sent out to "get" Sitting Bull. He did-a "scarlet blanket" ceremony to
his god, which involved SO cuts of skin off each arm and then 24 hours of
dancing. The now General Custer led one of the three forces of the U.S. and
came across the trail of the Indians as they were moving. Recklessly and
against orders, he attacked them. In the battle Custer was killed and the core
of the 7th Cavalry was destroyed. Later the Sioux were defeated by Colonel
Nelson Miles and Sitting Bull was taken prisoner. Still later, of course, he
was famous with Bill Cody's Wild West Show, only to be killed in 1896 by
Indian policemen, who had come to arrest him as a high priest of a ghost

dance movement. After the capture of Sitting Bull, the Sioux Chief Big
Foot, with 300 followers, escaped to the Badlands of South Dakota. They,
too, were captured and taken to Wounded Knee Creek. When the soldiers
were attempting to disarm the Indians gun fire broke out, the Indians were
massacred and the bodies left on the ground to freeze. This is yet today a
source of much Indian grievance and discontent. (Ref. 294)

In the meantime, by 1870 a new tanning process developed in 1870, made
buffalo hides commercially workable and therefore buffalo hunting a year
around business. At the same time there appeared the high powered Sharps'
rifle that could kill a full grown buffalo at 500 yards. A top marksman
might kill 200 a day in the Texas panhandle. This marked the end of the
buffalo and of the remaining Indians. Buffalo slaughter at more than a
million a year meant that by 1886 only about 1,000 remained on the plains.
(Ref. 294)

Next we must turn our attention to the great southwest, where in the middle
of the century some 7,000 Apaches lived in Arizona, New and Old Mexico.
There were several bands - the White Mountain group, the Aravaipa
Apache, the Mimbres and the Chiricahuas being the most numerous. The
latter group was perhaps the most formidable and was led by Chief Cochise.
In Mexico in 1837 and after, the states of Chihuahua and Sonora paid
bounty of 100 pesos for a male Apache scalp, 50 for a woman's and 25 for a
child. The Apache bows were lethal at 100 yards and they used slings
which could hurl stones 150 yards, as well as war clubs and lances. Trained
as long distance runners, they could cover 70 miles a day on foot in tough
terrain. Chief Geronimo was made most vicious by a massacre of many of
his people by the Mexican General Carrasco at Janos, Mexico. By the
1870s there were 10,000 white miners, ranchers and townsmen in Arizona
and by 1880 the number had risen to 37,000, about 10 times the Indian
population. In the 1880s 5,000 Apaches were forced on to the San Carlos
reservation in southern Arizona where they were supposed to farm, but they
didn't know how. Geronimo repeatedly escaped to Mexico and returned to
raid. In 1886 General Nelson Miles took 5,000 troops to hunt him down and
Geronimo finally gave himself up, after his family had been sent to Florida.
In 1894 he and the remaining Chiricahuas were taken to Ft. Sill, where most
of them soon died of disease. (Ref. 294)

The Zunis of the Southwest were very intractable and had repelled the
Spaniards in earlier years, time and time again. Palmer (Ref. 165) says that
they derived originally from two parental stocks, one from the north and
one from the southwest, but their language is distinct and intelligible to no
other Indian tribe. They have succeeded in preserving their myths and
traditions in a "series of sacred epics, a sort of inchoate Bible"[footnote].
These facts are particularly interesting in view of Barry Fell's hypothesis
discussed on page 210, concerning the possible relationship of the Zuni and
their language with Libyan sailors. Information about some of the
southwestern Indians has been slow in coming to light. In Rose Palmer's
book, The North American Indians, (Ref. 165) written under the
Smithsonian auspices as late as 1949, she does not even mention the
Hohokam and Anasazi. She does mention "Basket Makers", stating that
some cave-like dwellings in deep recesses of cliffs had been abandoned
long before the Spaniards came. *** (Page 1202)

Quotation from Frank H. Cushing, who lived with the Zuni from 1879 to
1883, as given by Palmer (Ref. 165), page 128

The Ute, Comanche, Hopi and Pima Shoshonean languages are related to
the Nahautl group of languages of Mexico, which includes Aztec. Some of
these Shoshonean Athapascan groups had early been isolated by mountains
and deserts. The Mohave, who tattooed their bodies and wore practically no
clothes, along with the Yuma, formed a connecting link with the southwest
tribes. They had rafts and planked canoes sealed with asphalt.

In the far west, the Yuroks and Hupa (also Hoopa) of northern California,
like the northwest coastal Indians, were highly civilized, using bows and
arrows, body armor of thick elk hide and dugout canoes with 6 to 8- paddles
that could even be used in the ocean. They ate salmon, mussels, seaweed
(for salt), whale meat and acorns. The latter were dried, pounded into meal,
treated with hot water to remove the tannic acid and then cooked in closely
woven baskets, with stirring, until a tasteless gruel resulted. They grew and
smoked tobacco. Although those two California tribes spoke- entirely
different languages, they were friendly and cooperative with each other. The
Hupa, living along the Trinity River, did not even know of white men until
the gold rush days of 1850. (Ref. 165)

MEXICO, CENTRAL AMERICA AND THE CARIBBEAN

The Mexican Revolution actually began in 1810 when Miguel Hidalgo, a
priest, called on his Indian followers to rise against their local rulers.
Spanish rule had already deteriorated as Napoleon had subdued Spain. But
Mexico City was even then a rich capital, with caravans of mules with
noisy bells, carrying merchandise and maize flour daily to the city. (Ref.
260) Various governors appeared and disappeared in Mexico in that time of
struggle between classes and among ambitious, selfish, military men. The
Mexicans copied the United States constitution in 1824 almost exactly, but
they could not make it function properly because of constant collisions of
state and national sovereignties, with the result that by the 1830s they had
alternated between anarchy and military despotism. (Ref. 217) War with
Texas in 1835 and with the United States in 1845-48 resulted in the loss of
much land. (See pages 1157 and 1158). Mexico had 30 presidents in its first
50 years. (Ref. 8) Benito Juarez, a Zapotec Indian, finally came into power
and tried to improve his country's economic situation and lessen the
political power of the Church, but that era was interrupted by Napoleon III's
placing the Austrian Maximilian as Emperor of Mexico, supported by
French troops, in opposition to Juarez. By 1867, however, Juarez had run
the French out and subordinated church and state to a secular
administration. As the French deserted, Maximilian was captured and shot.
The last third of the century saw Porfirio Diaz as dictator of Mexico, when
the liberals had been unable to give Mexico prosperity. Diaz allowed
spectacular economic progress, but with foreign capital and leaving the
populace poorer than ever. (Ref. 8)

Elsewhere in Central America there was much confusion. For awhile there
was a Confederation of Central America including Guatemala, Honduras,
Nicaragua, Costa Rica, San Salvador and Quezaltango, although the first
four soon declared themselves independent of the federal government. In
the first half of the century the main road to Guatemala City was almost
impassable even with mules. The people, even the whites, went about
essentially naked, living on tortillas, corn, dark beans and cigars. Polygamy
was common, even among nominal Catholics. There were many gigantic
Catholic churches desolate and deteriorating in the jungle, evidence of an
expiring people. When a cholera epidemic struck in 1838 the priests told the

Indians that foreigners in San Salvador had caused it, leading to further
political confusion. (Ref. 203) Stephens (Ref. 204) described the bull-fights
in Yucatan about 1840 as "brutal".

Nicaragua was the seat of multiple incidents, involving British, U.S. and
local revolutionaries and Latin America has been suspicious of U.S.
activities ever since. President Polk obtained the right of transit across
Panama by treaty with Colombia in 1840 and the Panama Railway was
completed in 1855, with American capital. The old Mayan ruins in both
Yucatan and what is now Honduras were investigated and publicized by
John Stephens from the United States. Belize had 6,000 people, 4,000 of
which were black, mahogany cutters, but there was complete integration of
the races in that British settlement. The old Indian 40 feet long canoes with
cabins still plied the rivers, but were now manned by Negroes. The
previously fierce, cannibalistic Caribs of the coast were now civilized and
most were Catholics, although they had not mixed with the Spanish
conquerors. (Ref. 203) There were three main political parties in Central
America, one lead by Morazan, former president of the Republic of San
Salvador, a second by the mulatto Ferrara in Honduras and finally Carrera,
an Indian of Guatemala. The latter's country, although dominated by
dictators through most of the century did manage to supply the Spanish
with sugar, cocoa and indigo.

Early in the century European introduced disease took a high toll
throughout Mexico and Central America in general. The native population
of Mexico had been seriously depleted and in some areas, such as Veracruz
in particular, there was a human vacuum which was resettled by French and
Italian farmers. A big step in the control of tropical disease was made in
1881 by the Cuban physician, Carlos Finlay, as he defined the Aedes
aegypti mosquito as the insect vector in yellow fever. More complete details
were then developed by a United States commission working in Cuba under
Walter Reed, at about the turn of the century. (Ref. 125)

In the Caribbean, Cuba remained under the control of Spain, even as most
of the remainder of the Spanish Empire broke away. - This is not to say that
there were not uprisings. A Ten Years War was initiated by Carlos Manuel
de Despedes, but it was a revolt which was finally crushed. Cuba had 55

steam engines by 1860. It was the largest exporter of sugar and the richest
colony in the world. (Ref. 213) But still the people were not happy and
there was much bitterness which finally resulted in- 1895 with the brilliant
poet Mose Marti becoming the chief spokesman for a new and stronger
revolt. We have seen in a special segment above how the United States
became involved in this uprising which terminated in the Spanish American
War. Jamaica continued to have intermittent revolts against the white
colonials. When slavery was abolished in 1833 the sugar industry declined.
Overpopulation and the economic and social situations generated tension
and unrest, leading to more severe riots. About 95% of the population was
Negro or part-Negro and many left the island to seek employment
elsewhere in the Caribbean or the United States.

The story of Haiti is somewhat involved. At the end of the last century
Spain had ceded its part of the island, Santo Domingo, to France, but in
1801 the remarkable Negro leader, Toussaint L ‘Ouverture conquered it.
Although an expedition sent by Napoleon in

1802 failed to retake the island, Touissant was captured by trickery and died
in a French prison. But Haiti remained independent and the remaining
whites were expelled. Santo Domingo was brought under Haitian control by
J.P. Boyer in the 1840s, but actually anarchy persisted, with mulattos
fighting against Negroes. The eastern, originally Spanish part of the island
never was fully assimilated and eventually out of the turmoil there emerged
the Dominican Republic. (Ref. 38)

SOUTH AMERICA

From 1815 to 1822 there was an amazing eruption of new nations in South
America. In Argentina, after first having to fight off French, Portuguese and
Dutch, a revolutionary movement of 1810 gave liberals an opportunity to
reform the country socially and economically, but they failed. Jose de San
Martin kept the revolutionary flame alive in a remote province and in 1817
led a famous march across the Andes with 3,500 men, to set up a new
government in Chile. They then went on by sea to attack Lima, Peru. Back
home in Argentina, in mid-century a bloody dictator, Juan Manuel de
Rosas, took control, giving enormous ranches to his army veterans. Because

of his great horsemanship, he him self was a respected gaucho|[ footnote |
Rosas was overthrown by Jose de Urequiza of the army in the Battle of
Caseros in 1852 and the winner became chief executive, with a federal
constitution. Immigration accounted for about 1/2 the population growth in
this century. 30 % of the inhabitants lived in Buenos Aires and that city
would not join the Argentine federation and there were intermittent civil
wars between that city and province with the rest of Argentina through
1880, when the problems were finally solved under the presidency of Julio
Roca. In the meantime, alliances had been concluded with Uruguay and
Brazil and there had been a w ar with Paraguay between 1865 and 1870.
During the administrations of Domingo Sarmiento (1868-74) and Nicolas
Avellaneda (1874-80) education, commerce and immigration were
encouraged and the census of 1869 showed over 1,700,000 people. English
sheep were introduced to the country in 1840 and short-horn bulls in 1848.
(Ref. 119, 175, 122)

The gauchos were a mixture of Spanish Creoles and Indians

Chile organized as a republic under the son of an Irish officer, Bernardo
O'Higgins, in 1818. The principal result of the Chilean revolution was the
transfer of economic and social control fro m a Spanish-led society to one
dominated by conservative Creoles, as the people would not give up
religious processions, cockfighting and gambling and the aristocracy kept
their privileged positions and large estates. As with the other South A m
erican nations, civil war occurred in 1829 and 1830 and wars with
neighbors developed throughout the century. The greatest of those was the
War of the Pacific with Chile fighting against Peru and Bolivia from 1879
to 1884. Chilean troops were everywhere successful and Chile gained
possession of the Bolivian littoral and southern Peruvian coast, with rich
nitrate territories of great economic importance. This region ran all along
the Pacific coast and essentially blocked Bolivia fro m the sea. (Ref. 8) The
last civil war occurred in 1891 and as the century ended war with Argentina
was Narrowly averted.

To go back in time to the early century, having established their own
independence from Spain, Argentina and Chile went to the aid of Peru in
1821, with San Martin leading the army and Admiral Cochrane cooperating
with the Chilean navy. In 1822 San Martin and Simon Bolivar met in

Guayaquil at a time when only one Spanish army was left in the field. That
army surrendered at Ayacucho in 1824. Simon Bolivar had dreamed of one
great state of Colombia, but it was not to be and Ecuador, Colombia and
Venezuela went their separate ways. Bolivia became independent under
Bolivar in 1825 as a country some 21/2 times its present size. It was the rich
nitrate and copper deposits along the coast that tempted Chile to seize that
portion in the War of the Pacific (see paragraph above). In the 20th century
other neighbors were to further chew up the borders of hapless Bolivia.
Things were not a whole lot better in Colombia. In the seventy years just
prior to 1903 that country had 17 civil wars, with conservatives, liberals,
Catholics and separatists all involved from time to time. (Ref. 175)
Originally a part of Colombia, Panama was given a federal status by
Colombian constitutional amendment in 1855, although Panama did not
declare its complete independence until after the turn of the century. Large
oil reserves were found in Venezuela in 1870 and in the 20th century this
has greatly increased that nation's importance in the world. (Ref. 213)

Portugal acted differently from Spain and met the demands of local
autonomy. (Ref. 8) When Prince Regent Dom Joao, fleeing from Napoleon,
landed in Rio in 1808 that city became capital of an empire including,
besides Brazil itself, various Atlantic Islands, Angola and Mozambique in
Africa and scattered areas in China, India and Oceania. Brazilian ports were
opened; manufacture of iron and textiles undertaken; a bank, naval college,
medical faculty, library and printing press were established. European
artists and scientists arrived. Even so, as late as 1820 Brazil, in spite of gold
and diamond mines and the Portuguese empire, was a poor, oppressed
country, thinly populated and with little or no intellectual potential. (Ref.
292) Dom Joao returned to Portugal in 1821 with most of the cash from the
Bank of Brazil, leaving Crown Prince Pedro to govern. On October 12,
1822 the Senate proclaimed him as constitutional Emperor of Brazil as
Pedro I. Opposition to his autocratic ways and his obvious primary interest
in the mother country finally forced his abdication in favor of his 5 year old
son, Pedro I. Between 1840 and 1889 provincial revolts were gradually
brought to a close and a period of order and progress was initiated.
Commerce and industry expanded, 6,000 miles of railways were
constructed by 1889, gold mines were further developed and sugar and
rubber production were promoted. In 1872 the population was over

10,000,000, including 1,500,000 slaves. These were emancipated in 1888.
Things changed in November of 1889 when the army, headed by General
Manoel Deodoro da Fonseca, revolted and deposed the emperor and
proclaimed a republic. Fonseca was elected president in 1891.

Map taken from Reference 97

After Peru was liberated from Spain by Bolivar, there was still no real
political stability and civil strife continued until 1845 when Rarnon Castilla
emerged as one of the strong men supported by the military. Even another
small war with Spain occurred between 1863 and 1871 over some small off-
shore islands. Before the war's end Jose Balta had become president and
had begun some material expansion of Peru. Unfortunately Peru joined the
wrong side in the War of the Pacific, mentioned above, and at the end lost
the province of Tarapaca and after long haggling, the coastal portions of
two more provinces.

In 1816 Jose Rodriquez de Francia made himself perpetual dictator of
Paraguay as well as head of the Paraguayan Church and sealed that country
off from the rest of the world until his death in 1840. He was succeeded by
another dictator, Carlos Antonio Lopez, who held absolute power until
1862. His son, Francisco Solano Lopez succeeded him and attempted to
increase the power of the country by vigorous means. The population had
increased to over 1,000,000 and the first railway was constructed about that
time. Lopez's ambitions for additional territory, however, brought about war
with Brazil, Argentina and Uruguay (The War of the Triple Alliance)
between 1865 and 1870 and the Paraguayan nation was virtually
annihilated, with only about 28,000 men and some 200,000 women
surviving. A long period of instability followed, with the economy slow in
recovering.

In general we may say that the penchant for alternating dictatorships with
various odd types of democracy has continued throughout Latin America
even through the 20th century.

Note:The Four Great Indian Nations of the southeast were Jackson's
problems. The Chickasaw, Creek and Choctaw were all advanced civilized
peoples, but the Cherokees were astounding. Spread over northwest
Georgia into Alabama and part of Tennessee, the Cherokees had a printed
language, which had been developed by George Gist, also known as
Sequoyah, a Cherokee half-breed. Bibles, other books and even a weekly
newspaper, "The Cherokee Phoenix", were printed. They welcomed
Christian missionaries, built roads, houses and churches. In 1826 a
Cherokee reported that his people possessed 22,000 cattle, 7,600 houses,
46,000 swine, 2,500 sheep, 762 looms, 1,488 spinning wheels, 2,948 plows
10 saw mills, 31 grist mills, 62 blacksmith shops and 18 schools. They
were more civilized than the Georgia "crackers", who coveted their lands.
The independence of that Cherokee nation had been guaranteed by the U.S.
in a treaty of 1791, but the state of Georgia had been chopping away at
their lands for 30 years and the discovery of gold in the area in 1828 was
the last straw. The Indians had to be moved to Oklahoma Territory. The
journey cost them 25% of their numbers but they retained their identity,
government, language and alphabet to this day. (Ref. 64) There were
several important landmarks in the approach to the American Civil War.
Among these was the Dred Scott Decision. Dred Scott, a slave, having
been taken temporarily into a free state, sued for his freedom and the
Supreme Court decided against him on these grounds: (1) A Negro could
not be a U.S. citizen and therefore could not sue. (2) As a resident of
Missouri, the laws of Illinois (where he had been taken) did not apply. (3)
In any event, Congress could not deprive citizens of their property - in this
case a Slave. This was in 1857. Another stepping stone toward war was
John Brown's raid: John Brown, a long avid abolitionist, seized the federal
arsenal at Harpers’ Ferry in October, 1859, as the first step in establishing a
planned Negro Republic. He was later hanged. In the meantime, Lincoln,
as a member of the new Republican Party, appeared on the scene. His party
won the Congressional elections of 1860, combining solid policies of
Hamiltonian Federalism with the hopeful, humanitarian outlook of the old
party of Jefferson. Minnesota and Oregon were admitted as new states in
1858 and 1859, making 18 free and still only 15 slave states. Lincoln won
the new presidential election as the Democrats fought and split over
Douglas and Buchanan. (Ref. 39) The Navaho Indians have withstood the
white onslaught better than most and this may be because they are cultural

"borrowers" - learning agriculture, weaving and pottery from their early,
settled, Pueblo neighbors, stealing horses from the Spanish and many
social and religious ideas from the Mexicans. In 1863 Colonel Kit Carson
subjugated the Navaho and imprisoned 8,500 of them in Fort Sumner.
After three years they were released to a 16 million acre reservation in the
southwest. While in prison some learned silver working and with this and
their other skills they have survived as traders in the American market.
(Ref. 151, 8, 39) Up to 1868 nearly 450 treaties had been signed by the
U.S. government with various Indian groups and scarcely a one remained
unbroken. With the end of the Indian wars an economic recession hit the
West, for up to 1870 the federal administrations had been spending about
$1,000,000 for every Indian killed. (Ref. 64)

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CONMDUBWN FR

Geographical Presentation of Central and Northern Asia
Back to Introduction to the Method of Geographical Presentation

The reader will note on the map to follow that this geographical region is of
the general magnitude of North America, but much smaller than Africa. The
map does not include the very far eastern tip of Soviet Siberia with the
Magadan region and the Kamchatka peninsula. That extends roughly 600
miles farther east than the edge of the diagram, but it is of little interest in-
this manuscript. Although the various sub-divisions of central and northern
Asia are not discussed formally, as such, in the text because of constant
changing of borders and names throughout the centuries, the various present
day component parts will be discussed under their current names.

THE COMPONENT PARTS OF CENTRAL AND
NORTHERN ASIA

The boundaries of this area have been chosen somewhat arbitrarily so that
the region is bounded by European Russia on the northwest, Manchuria and
China on the southeast, Iran, Pakistan, India and Southeast Asia on the
south and otherwise by the Arctic and Pacific oceans and the Caspian Sea.
Siberia is a vast land lying almost entirely north of the 50th parallel. Just
below its center lies Mongolia, at roughly the latitude of Poland, but about
as large as Poland, Germany and France together. In south central Asia the
present states of Kazakh, Turkmen, Usbek, and Kirghiz all are incorporated
within the Soviet Union. The ancient and important city of Samarkand is in
Usbek while Tashkent lies at the eastern edge of Kirghiz. Standing alone
south of these central states is the country of Afghanistan, shown in yellow.
All of these central Asian areas have a great mixture of Turkish and
Mongolian peoples, with perhaps some remnants of the old Indo-European
speaking Kushans. The Moslem religion is predominant today.

The area shown in light red on the diagram deserves special mention. This
is the Zvarea of Tibet and Sinkiang, both of which are currently a part of the
Peoples Republic of China. Historically and genetically, at least until very
recent years, however, these A-were central Asian peoples, not "Han"
Chinese and so, ignoring the present political border we have elected to

include this large area under the heading of Central Asia. Thus there is a
heavy dotted line border, rather than a solid line about these regions, as at
present they are not actually defined as "countries".

KAZAKUSTAN

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Seams, MIRERISTAR KYROYISTAN
Mieanta Ax} .
Rxry TURKMENISTAN
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SHIA, .

mag IRAN ARGH ANESTAN

CHINA

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sacd
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Central and Northern Asia (This map was
obtained from
http://english. freemap.jp/index.html and is
used with permission under a Creative
Commons Attribution 3.0 license.)

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. The Near East

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NOOB WN RP

Central and Northern Asia: Beginning to 8000 B.C.

CENTRAL AND NORTHERN ASIA

It is of interest that some geologists have written that during much of the
Triassic and Jurassic periods some 200 million years ago, southern Tibet
was largely submerged below the tropical sea of Tethys - water separating
the continents of Eurasia and Gondwanaland. During the Cretaceous period
65 million years ago, the Indian subcontinent separated, moved across the
Tethys and collided with Eurasia with a terrific impact which formed the
Himalayan range and the Tibetan plateau. The collision zone folded the
earth's crusts to almost a right angle. Then only a few million years ago
further uplift of the Himalayans occurred, incident to glaciation and other
factors, and these mountains are still rising at the rate of 1/2 centimeter a
year. (Ref. 182, 100)

Skeletal remains have been found of the cave dwelling Neanderthal hunters
all about the area from the Caspian to the Aral seas. As the last Ice Age
retreated, Siberian reindeer hunters progressively worked northward. Men
of truly modern type were pressing into this far north land some 35,000
years ago, where they hunted mammoths within a hundred miles of the
Arctic Circle, along the Pechora River. An early wave of men spread from
the Ural Mountains across central Asia to southern Siberia and Mongolia
and their relics have come to be known as the Mal'ta - Afontova Culture. A
second wave penetrated eastern Siberia along the Aldan River and Soviet
excavations there have shown these people of the Diuktai Culture to have
hunted mammoths, muskoxen, bison and giant woolly rhinoceroses about
35,000 years ago. These people may have been some of the first
adventurers across the land bridge into Alaska. Certain Siberian tribes
existing today (Nganasans, Eutsis, Dogan Chukchi, etc.) have a complex
time-factored mythology and ceremonials, including lunar calendar
notations, bear and reindeer ceremonies, etc. that are related to Upper
Paleolithic cultures of 15,000 to 35,000 years ago.

Around Lake Baikal and the upper Yenissei River well preserved artifacts
dating to 20,000 years ago have been excavated. These include huts and
small art objects, such as carved geese figurines and tiny female statuettes.

From the latter it is apparent that these Mongoloid people wore skin suits,
parka hoods and moccasins sewed on trousers. The bow and arrow may
have been invented in central Asia by 13,000 B.C. About 11,000 B.C. the
Asiatic wolf probably was under human control, but only by getting
animals under six weeks of age. This was not true dog domestication. (Ref.

Dr. Ales Hrdlicka has found on the southern slopes of the Himalayas among
the Tibetan tribes a yellow-brown stock which "in physique, in behavior, in
dress, and even in intonations of language"(1) appear identical with
American Indians. Could this be their original homeland?

Forward to Central and Northern Asia: 8000 to 5000 B.C.

Central and Northern Asia: 8000 to 5000 B.C.

THE INDIAN SUBCONTINENT
Back to Central and Northern Asia: Beginning to 8000 B.C.

Middle Stone Age sites with their delicate flake-shaped tools occurred
mainly in India in the central and peninsular areas, but also in the Soan
Valley and at Sanghao in northeast India. Microliths and Mesoliths of the
Late Stone Age are distributed almost throughout the subcontinent, except
in Pakistan. Interestingly enough, scattered in remote areas throughout there
are still today about twenty million aboriginal peoples such as the Gonds,
Bondos, Kani, Todas and Magas, of uncertain racial ancestry. A few seem
to be related to the Australoids of Australia. Pollen analysis suggests forest
clearance and cereal culture in Rajasthan as early as the 8th millennium
B.C. (Ref. 33, 88, 8)

Forward to Central and Northern Asia: 5000 to 3000 B.C.

Central and Northern Asia: 5000 to 3000 B.C.

CENTRAL AND NORTHERN ASIA
Back to Central and Northern Asia: 8000 to 5000 B.C.

An early phase of the Yang-Shao Culture which has been mentioned in
connection with China has also been unearthed at Pan-p'o-ts'un in central
Asia. It had a slash and burn agriculture, domesticated animals and hand-
made pottery. In contrast to our remarks about the invention of the wheel in
Sumer, some authorities believe that it was invented in western Asia prior
to 3,500 B.C., but the circumstances are unknown. It is possible that the
inventors were relatives of the Kurgans of south Russia who did bring
wheeled chariots into Europe. (Ref. 175)

Forward to Central and Northern Asia: 3000 to 1500 B.C.

Central and Northern Asia: 3000 to 1500 B.C.

CENTRAL AND NORTHERN ASIA
Back to Central and Northern Asia: 5000 to 3000 B.C.

Throughout the fifteen hundred years covered in this chapter, the Iranian
(Indo-European) tribes slowly expanded in all directions, including various
salients across southern Asia both east and north. By 2,500 B.C. the hunting
economies had begun to give way to herding and agriculture in Kazakhistan
and central Siberia. Horse drawn carts were in use in Turkistan by the same
date. The pottery of all these people showed affinities to the Middle East. It
was the domestication of the horse which allowed them to spread and
penetrate in all directions.

In the far northeast of Asia, the Mongol peoples continued their own
development, probably more closely related to the Chinese culture than to
the Indo-European development. In the area which now comprises the
western Chinese provinces of Kansu and Sinkiang, but which
geographically are more a part of central Asia, the Pan-Chan phase of the
Yang-shao Culture appeared about 2,500 B.C. with large urns painted in
spirals with purple, brown, red and black. By 1,500 B.C. this gave way to
the Hsien-tien Culture which included farming and the use of hand-made
pottery and copper tools. Farther northwest, in the Yenisei Valley, the
Afanasieve Culture with stock breeders and hunters, stamped pottery, and
copper ornaments have been dated to this 3rd millennium. By 1,500 B.C.
the Androvonovo Culture existed between the Don and the Yenisei rivers,
with small settlements of up to ten semi-subterranean houses. These
individuals, who were the ancestors of the later nomads of the central
Asiatic steppes, grew wheat and millet and bred live-stock at that time.
(Ref. 136, 8, 45, 213)

Forward to Central and Northern Asia: 1500 to 1000 B.C.

Central and Northern Asia: 1500 to 1000 B.C.

CENTRAL AND NORTHERN ASIA
Back to Central and Northern Asia: 3000 to 1500 B.C.

Iranian (Indo-European) tribes occupied all of the area of south central Asia
from the Aral Sea to the Tarim Basin, and gradually extended their
territories on east toward China and southeast into the Indian peninsula. At
about 1,000 B.C. Iranians of Transoxia found that a rider could manage his
horse on a battlefield, initiating a weapon that ultimately outmoded the
chariot. It is assumed that the Mongolian and the Hunnish-Turkish peoples
were multiplying in the farther north and northeastern reaches of Asia, but
little actual information is available. In the 13th century B.C. in south
Siberia, the Karasuk Culture developed from the Androvonova, and there
was a change from settled communities to seasonal nomadism. Small
curved knives similar to those at An- Yang in China have been found. (Ref.
136, 45)

Forward to Central and Northern Asia: 1000 to 700 B.C.

Central and Northern Asia: 1000 to 700 B.C.

CENTRAL AND NORTHERN ASIA
Back to Central and Northern Asia: 1500 to 1000 B.C.

South central Asia was now occupied by various migrating Indo-European
tribes, some moving gradually south between the Aral and Caspian seas and
others moving west toward the southern Russian steppe. Ordos, the region
of Mongolia lying inside the loop of the Yellow River where it turns north,
was inhabited by nomadic tribes, including the Hsiung-nu, an Altaic-
speaking Mongoloid people.[footnote] Broad daggers, curved knives,
harness ornaments and belt plaques with animal profiles have been among
the remnants found. Rock carvings in Tibet along the upper Indus River
valley in Ladakh on the Tibetian-Kashmir border dating 2,000 to 3,000
years ago indicate Stone Age hunters with bows and arrows. Due to a
gradual continued rise of the Himalayan arc and the resulting lessening of
the effective rainfall through the centuries much of this area is now desert.
(Ref. 8, 45, 182)

Some authorities deny that the Hsiung-nu can be identified as a separate
people on the borders of China until the 2nd century B.C. See references 45
and 127 and this manuscript under 4th century B.C., CENTRAL AND
NORTHERN ASIA.

Forward to Central and Northern Asia: 700 to 601 B.C.

Central and Northern Asia: 700 to 601 B.C.

CENTRAL AND NORTHERN ASIA
Back to to Central and Northern Asia: 1000 to 700 B.C.

The Hsiung-nu of the Mongolian region had horses of various breeds,
among them one with an upright mane. They, like the Huns of probable
later descent, were expert horsemen. East of Mongolia excavations have
revealed the Tagar Culture, dating back to 700 B.C. and continuing for
about 600 years. This included a semi-settled people who designed animals
on small knives, belt and harness plaques and broad daggers. The latter
have also been found in South Russia and on the northern borders of China.

The Iranians of Tranoxiana were a mixed group of tribes. Some, who
moved on into southern Russia were known as Scythians while their
kinsmen who remained behind became known as Sakas. The Medes had
pretty well left this area to settle in Iran south of the Caspian, but behind
them came their cousins, the Persians. Zoraster was born along the Oxus
River in this century and did much of his teaching in Khurasan. (Ref. 136,
8, 45, 127)

Forward to Central and Northern Asia: 600 to 501 B.C.

Central and Northern Asia: 600 to 501 B.C.

CENTRAL AND NORTHERN ASIA
Back to Central and Northern Asia: 700 to 601 B.C.

There was probably very little change from the situation described in the
last century. The Tagar culture people continued in the north, the early
Mongoloids in the northeast, and the proliferating Iranian tribes, especially
the Sakas and the eastern Medes, in the south.

Forward to Central and Northern Asia: 500 to 401 B.C.

Central and Northern Asia: 500 to 401 B.C.

CENTRAL AND NORTHERN ASIA
Back to Central and Northern Asia: 600 to 501 B.C.

There were people in the Altai Mountains of southern Siberia and an
advanced people lived near Minusinsk, some 800 miles northeast of Lake
Balkash and some 200 miles north of the northwestern corner of Mongolia
in the Ordos region of Siberia. The Rockefeller Collection contains a
bronze reindeer mounted on a marble base representing a known Tagar
Period of art from that location. As mentioned in previous chapters this
same Tagar Culture has been found in more southern areas of Asia, also.
The Persian Empire extended well up into central Asia from the Aral Sea to
the edge of the Tarim Basin and north of this the unconquered Sakas
roamed at will. Just north of the Aral Sea, at Issik near Alma Alta, one
thousand gold objects dating to this 5th century B.C. have been excavated,
indicating that this had been an important trade route. (Ref. 45, 183, 176)

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Central and Northern Asia: 400 to 301 B.C.

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Back to Central and Northern Asia: 500 to 401 B.C.

At Pasyryk in the Altai Mountains of southern Siberia eight burials, dated
from the 4th to the 2nd centuries B.C., have been excavated. These
contained wooden chariots, textiles and furniture as well as men with skin
tattoos, all well preseved by the perpetual frost. The Tagar Culture
continued throughout much of the rest of Siberia. South central Asia was
overrun by Alexander as he went from Afghanistan through the Hindu Kush
to Bukhara and Tashkent. At the very end of the century, however, the
Mauryan Dynasty of India took over a large part of Afghanistan.

As we Shall see in the section on CHINA, below, the non-Chinese people of
Mongolia and the adjacent part of Siberia had now about completed their
slow transition into full horse nomadism and they began to attack the
Chinese perimeter, as well as even taking to the sea toward Japan. Skulls
from the Lake Baikal region of northern Mongolia, dated to this era, are low
faced skulls of the pre-Hsuing-nu population, and were different from the
later high-faced skulls of the true Hsuing-nu. (Ref. 45, 8, 101, 127)

Forward to Central and Northern Asia: 300 to 201 B.C.
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Central and Northern Asia: 300 to 201 B.C.

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Back to Central and Northern Asia: 400 to 301 B.C.

The homeland of the Parthians was on the eastern shore of the Caspian Sea
and about 247 B.C. they moved south, taking territory away from the
Seleucids, under their leader, Arsaces. Bactria became independent at 250
B.C. as a Greco-Bactrian kingdom under Diodotus, and it became the center
of a web of caravan routes linking Siberia and China with India, Persia and
the Mediterranean cities. (Ref. 8) Farther north in Siberia, Tagar Culture
groups continued as in recent centuries. In Inner Mongolia, the Hsiung-nu
was just forming as the first great confederation of Altaic-speaking nomads.
(Ref. 101) Afghanistan was ruled by the Maurya Dynasty of India, until this
entire area was reclaimed by the Syrian Antiochus III at the end of the
century.

Forward to Central and Northern Asia: 200 to 101 B.C.
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Central and Northern Asia: 200 to 101 B.C.

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Back to Central and Northern Asia: 300 to 201 B.C.

Bactria, astride the Hindu Kush and making up the northern part of present
day Afghanistan, was ruled by Greek kings as remnants of Alexander's
empire, and the country allowed Indian, Chinese, Iranian and Greek
cultures to meet and intertwine. For the next two or three hundred years this
was the hub of the east-west Ecumene, even though the Yue-chi destroyed
the political unity of the Kingdom of Bactria. (Ref. 139) This take-over was
part of a new turmoil which arose in central Asia about 130 B.C. as Huns
from far eastern central Asia (perhaps Mongolia) started to push the Yue-chi
(Tocharians) westward and they in turn chased a few remaining Scythians
beyond the Jaxartes River[footnote]. The Scythians, in turn, headed
southward and destroyed the Greco-Bactrian kingdom just mentioned, on
their way to the Punjab of India, with the Yue-chi following later in about
100 B.C. via northern Afghanistan.

This classical view of one people "chasing" or "driving" another ahead of
them is not accepted by the scholarly Maenchen-Helfen (Ref. 127) who
believes the migrations took place for other reasons

The Huns just mentioned were chiefly the Hsuing-nu, under Chief Modok,
and they soon dominated not only Mongolia but the Indo-European oasis
statelets of Chinese Turkestan as well. Armor called "chia" was worn at
least by the nobles in the Hsuing-nu army.

The word may mean "hide armor" but in graves at Noin Ula, Mongolia and
Tuva, Siberia armor made of iron scales attached to fabric has been found
dating to this century. Bronze, iron and leather were probably all used. After
the conquest of Tuva, the Hsuing-nu population, which was already racially
mixed, became even more Europoid[footnote]. (Ref. 127)

"Europoid" is a term used by Soviet anthropologists to indicate "non-
Mongoloid"

The Chinese ruler, Wu-Ti, spent the resources and energies of China for
eighteen years in great campaigns against the Hsuing-nu and they were
finally driven out of Inner Mongolia, Kansu and Chinese Turkestan.
Ferghana, west of the Tarim Basin was the homeland of "heavenly horses"
which the Chinese felt they had to have in their cavalry to counteract the
agile ponies of the Hsuing-nu and other raiding - nomads. At the end of the
century Wu-Ti sent armies to subdue the nomads of Sinkiang and go
through this area to get the horses. A Chinese explorer had reached this
Ferghana Valley in 128 B.C. and a military garrison had been established by
101 B.C. The western edge of the arid Tarim Basin was the source of jade
for the Chinese carvers. Farther west, the Parthians had extended their
empire south and east to take in part of Khurasan and the edge of the Hindu
Kush. The Bactrian camel, in this and adjacent centuries, served all the
barbarians from the Great Wall of China to the Crimea as pack and riding
animals. (Ref. 139, 101, 8, 127)

Forward to Central and Northern Asia: 100 to 0 B.C.
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Central and Northern Asia: 100 B.C. to 0

CENTRAL AND NORTHERN ASIA
Back to Central and Northern Asia: 101 to 0 B.C.

In the north China, under Emperor Wu-ti, again took the offensive against
the Hsiung-nu and rebuilt the old Ch'in wall, then opened up the route to
central Asia, extending control over the oasis states of the Tarim Basin. In
44 B.C. Wu-ti defeated the Hsiung-nu along the border and pushed them
west where they fled to the Lake Bakal region already occupied by the Yue-
chi. The latter were then pushed west and south to take over Bactria and
confront the Parthian Empire of Persia. The last defeat of the Huns (Hsiung-
nu) by the Chinese military forces came in 36 B.C. when an expeditionary
force completely broke up the Asiatic's power. (Ref. 136, 8)

At the beginning of the century two Greek principalities remained just south
of the central Asian Massive and south of them, extending into present day
Pakistan were the Iranian Sakas in the east and the related Iranian Suren
Kingdom to the west. About the middle of the century the latter invaded the
Indus Valley, breaking the power of the Sakas and deposing the last of the
Indo-Greek princes. At about the same time the Huns also recovered and
began to more south again against the Greater Yue-chi (Kushans), then
occupying the entire region between the Oxus and the Jaxartes rivers, and
soon extending through their Suren cousins, their control down the Indus in
present day Pakistan. In this era Tibet was closer to India, culturally, than to
China or other Asian centers. (Ref. 136, 8)

Forward to Central and Northern Asia: 0 to A.D. 100

Central and Northern Asia: 0 to A.D. 100

CENTRAL AND NORTHERN ASIA
Back to Central and Northern Asia: 100 to B.C.

The Silk Road trade reached its peak in this century, sustaining a string of
states extending along the caravan roads from Roman Syria to the northwest
border of China. In Bactria, a union of five Yue-chi tribes took the Kabut
Valley, driving out the Pahlavas and soon establishing an empire which
comprised all of Afghanistan as well as northwestern India. The Kushans
were apparently one clan of the Yue-chi which included or was synonymous
with the Tocharians, but they were dominant in this expansionist drive and
the entire empire soon bore their name only. These Kushans even sent an
embassy across the Caspian Sea and into Armenia to meet with the Romans
in A.D. 58. The empire was a melting pot, with Indian, Chinese, central
Asian and Helleno-Roman culture and their coins showed a wide range of
deities, some Hellenistic (Heliols, Hephaistos), Iranian (Mithra, Nana) and
Indian (Siva, Buddha). (Ref. 140, 8, 19)

The Kushans pushed their administration on into India subjugating the
Surens and Sakas. They then reversed their armies and turned northward
toward China, but were defeated by the great Chinese General Pan Ch'ao
who was on a campaign to control Sinkiang (Tarim Basin) in A.D. 90. Pan
Ch’ao then led his army across the Pamir Mountains to reach the Caspian
Sea.

In the meantime, the Tibetians had attacked northwest China without much
success. In the far north, the northern Hsuing-nu (Huns) were defeated by
the southern Hsuing-nu in A.D. 85 and then were further beaten by the
Mongol Sien-pi in 87 and by the Chinese General Tou Hsien in 89. It is no
wonder that although part of them submitted to overlords, a great part of the
survivors migrated westward, leaving their lands to the Mongols. This
westward migration of the Huns was furthered by famine and anthrax
among their cattle and horses. Along the steppe adjacent to China they were
joined by Iranian herdsmen, Mongols from the forests of Siberia and even
Chinese renegades and captive Europoids of various tribes, all of them

subsequently called "Huns" as they gradually headed toward Europe. A
great part of the Hsuing-nu confederacy, however, consisted of Mongoloids
of the Baikal type, but this does not mean that all Mongoloids of this type
were Hsuing-nu. (Ref. 127) The fiery, black-browed horsemen of the
steppe, normally well nourished on animal protein foods, could easily
overcome their more slated, carbohydrate fed Chinese neighbors, except
when strong dynasties were in power such as the Han, in control at that
time. (Ref. 222)

Forward to Central and Northern Asia: A.D. 101 to 200
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Central and Northern Asia: A.D. 101 to 200

CENTRAL AND NORTHERN ASIA
Back to Central and Northern Asia: 0 to A.D. 100

In far eastern and northern Asia Mongolian nomads, perhaps with some
admixture of Turkish, Europoid elements, all of which are traditionally
considered as ancestors of the Huns, lived as harsh, bow-legged men with
large heads and massive chests which apparently helped them to withstand
the blazing days and freezing nights of the Gobi desert. Their chief meat
was mutton, but occasionally they ate beef, horse or camel and the humps
of the latter were considered a great delicacy. In general, in the wilder areas
the cattle did not adapt well and camels were not sufficiently productive,
having only a single foal every three years. The yak was used for milk,
rather than fundamentally for meat. (Ref. 211)

As pack animals the horse and Bactrian camel were the means of opening
the great commercial routes across the central Asian steppe, with many
change-over points along the way. Stone Tower, somewhere north of the
Pamirs, was the great meeting place where exquisite Chinese silks and
exotic spices were bartered for Roman glassware, pottery, asbestos cloth,
coral beads, gems, grape wine for the emperor of China, silver and gold.

The drain of gold from the West was fantastic in amount. In the desert at the
north of the Tarim Basin at present day Turpan (or Turfan) about 950
underground canals called "Karez" were constructed to bring irrigation
water from the Tian Shan (Celestial Mountains) to the desert, where a
melon and grape growing oasis was thus developed. The Han Chinese ruled
Turpan at this time, but through the centuries it was controlled by numerous
Central Asian peoples. The "blue-print" for such an underground water
system was brought along the silk route from Persia, where the canals were
called "Qanats". (Ref. 211, 73)

As noted in the last chapter, the Tocharians and other Yue-chi tribes had
combined to create the vast Kushan Empire which in this century covered
almost the entire central Asian land mass in its southern portion. Their

greatest king, Kanishka, ruled this empire from India, and more details will
be written in that section of this chapter. On the Turkistan frontier with
China, Mongol Hsiung-nu, Tibetans and other tribesmen lived side by side
with the Chinese, who still ruled at least the most eastern portion of this
area, although their protectorate over the Tarim Basin had lapsed in A.D.
106. (Ref. 136)

to Central and Northern Asia: A.D. 201 to 300
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ONDAUNARWNE

Central and Northern Asia: A.D. 201 to 300

CENTRAL AND NORTHERN ASIA
Back to Central and Northern Asia: A.D. 200 to 301 B.C.

In the regions of Afghanistan and western Turkestan the Kushan Empire
split into several principalities and the Persian Sassanids appear to have
rapidly established some dominance over the nearest of these, but their
claim to have made the Oxus and the Indus their frontiers seems over-
stated. The Kushan states certainly continued to exist as political entities
until the 5th century. With the fall of the Han Dynasty in A.D. 220, China
lost control of eastern Turkestan, and the Kushans, with some Persian
influence, once again gained control. Still farther north the Hunnish tribes
were flourishing.

By the opening of this century all parts of the 2,500 mile trade route from
Syria to the Tarim Basin were under pressure by barbarians and a great deal
of the trade had already shifted to sea lanes in the Indian Ocean. Along the
silk route, however, art flourished from this century for the next 700 years
as a remarkable combination of stylistic elements drawn from India, Persia
and China. Stone was scarce, but decorated wood pieces and tempera
painting on wood was common. (Ref. 136, 8, 19)

Forward to Central and Northern Asia: A.D. 301 to 400
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Central and Northern Asia: A.D. 301 to 400

CENTRAL ASIA
Back to Central and Northern Asia: A.D. 201 to 300

In this century the Persians continued to rule and populate both Afghanistan
and Turkistan, introducing Zorastrianism to the area. In 371 the Ephthalites
(White Huns[footnote]) invaded the upper Oxus (ancient Bactria) but the
Persian Shapur II came to an understanding with them and subsequently
these people actually guarded this part of the Persian domain.

See footnote under IRAN, 5th century C.E.

It was apparently a sharpening of the climate in this part of the world which
forced the nomadic tribes to other pastures toward the end of this 4th
century. Rather than go east against strong China, even after the fall of the
Han Dynasty, many of the Huns turned west, riding bony, rough haired,
small headed horses with short, strong legs, needing little water and
covering over 60 miles a day. (See footnote on previous page). As we have
seen in the paragraphs above, other peoples were ahead of them, in the
greatest mass migrations known, before or since. (Ref. 33)

Up through this century Tibet was divided into 13 principalities with war
continually raging between them. (Ref. 272)

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Central and Northern Asia: A.D. 401 to 500

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Back to Central and Northern Asia: A.D. 301 to 400

By this century the Kushans had become completely Persianized and by
A.D. 440 they were swept away by the Epthalites coming down from the
Altaic region in repeated raids. After terrorizing the Persians and
conquering Afghanistan in A.D. 460 these misnamed "White Huns"
[footnote] left Persia alone and went on to India. The center of power of the
Altaic nomads was the country along the Great Wall of China and in
Mongolia, north of the Gobi desert and from there they struck both
southward and westward. This great nomad power had begun with the
Hsiung-nu who, after being defeated by the Chinese Han in the 1st century
C.E. had re-established themselves in central Asia and had taken some
Iranians and Mongoloid tribes from the forests of Siberia into their fold.
(Ref. 137, 8)

See footnote on Central and Northern Asia: A.D. 301 to 400

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Central and Northern Asia: A.D. 501 to 600

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Back to Central and Northern Asia: A.D. 401 to 500

In eastern Asia the successors of the Hsiung-nu were the Kok Turuk, also
called the Blue or Celestial Turks and these were the people who by 550
were driving the Juan-Juan out of Mongolia. (See also CHINA, this
chapter). Their successors in Mongolia were the Turks, proper, called T'u-
Chu~eh by the Chinese. This Turkish Empire was an exceptional one which
could bear on western China and the Europe-Near East areas all at the same
time. It now advanced rapidly and crushed the Ephthalites in 553, allowing
the Persians to again occupy the lands south of the Oxus. The amalgamated
remnants of the Juan-Juan and the Ephthalites were known in the West as
the Avars. Previous to this the latter of the two peoples had lived in Bactria
and had continuously raided Persia. In this century the Avars had already
reached the Balkans and Hungary. Some place in this mass of migrating,
nomadic peoples the stirrup was developed and this made it possible for
horsemen to ride fast and meet a shock, as with a lance, and still survive.
(Ref. 8, 101, 137, 213)

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Central and Northern Asia: A.D. 601 to 700

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The Great Turkish Confederation controlled most of central Asia and
particularly Turkistan, at the beginning of the century. Chinese diplomacy
started to break up this Turkish control by 630 and then the Chinese
military reconquered the Tarim Basin in 648 and West Turkistan in 656 at
the peak of their expansion into Central Asia. The break-up of the Turkish
Confederation thus allowed the Moslems to take the Oxus region just after
the middle of the century with very little resistance.

The Chinese of the T'ang Dynasty were supported by the Turkic speaking
Uigurs (also Uighurs), who were called "Yee-che" by the Chinese. Actually
the Turks of Mongolia had made the Chinese T'ang ruler, T'ai-tsung, their
Grand Khan in 630' Near the oasis of Dunhuang, just west of the Great Wall
of China and now a part of China, and northeast of the Tarim Basin, lie the
caves of the Thousand Buddhas, constructed chiefly during the T'ang
Dynasty (A.D. 618-906). In subsequent centuries pilgrims from all over
central Asia traveled to visit this labyrinth of sculptures and frescoes
painted by Buddhist monks.

(Ref. 8, 101, 73)

Tibet was unified early in the century when rival fiefdoms began to be
consolidated by King Sontsan Ganbo (or Ganbu), who incidentally married
two foreign queens, one from the T'ang Dynasty of China and one a
princess of Nepal. An embassy was sent to China in 641. Although the
Tibetans became Buddhists, they maintained a war ethos and continued at
intervals to fight the Chinese over a period of two centuries. Xenophobic
policies prohibiting foreigners, along with the world's highest and most
difficult terrain, was then sufficient to keep Tibet isolated from the rest of
the world for hundreds of years. The Tibetans remained independent in
essence until the 20th century, even though the Chinese have long claimed
sovereignty (even back to this 7th century). Tibetans retained a separate

language, culture, borders, money and religion. The holiest shrine still
standing in the center of Lhasa is the Jokhang, built around A.D. 650 and
serving as the Buddhist "Mecca" to the Tibetan faithful. (Ref. 272, 228,
182)

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Central and Northern Asia: A.D. 701 to 800

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In the northern portions of Central Asia, from the Aral Sea and the Syr
Darya Valley east to Manchuria, the rulers were the Blue or Celestial Turks
(See page 421). They appear to have driven other Turkish tribes westward,
including the Ogur and also their former rulers, the Juan-Juan of Mongolia.
In the most northeastern part of Mongolia the Uigurs seized control in 744,
establishing a capital on the Orkhon River near the site of later Karakorum.
The most far flung eastward group of Indo-European (Europoid) tribes were
those who reached Chinese Turkistan and were called Tocharians. Their
language was written down in this century. The western region of Central
Asia, Kashgar, was overtaken by the advance of Islam and due to the energy
of the local emir (governor), considerable advance was made against the
Turks. The Arabs controlled all of western Turkistan and Afghanistan and
the Moslem religion has persisted there until this day.

The Arabs were helped in driving the Chinese out of west Turkistan by the
Karluk Turks, who attacked the Chinese from the rear. This Chinese army
was finally completely defeated at the Talas River just south and west of
Lake Balkhash in A.D. 751 in one of those decisive battles of history. China
was not to be influential in Central Asia for six centuries and Buddhism
gave way to Islam. Of some importance, too, is the fact that some of the
captured Chinese soldiers brought the art of making paper with them to the
West. (Ref. 8, 38, 19, 101)

Padma Sambhava, an Indian guru, brought Buddhism to Tibet, heretofore
rife with spirits, demigods and demons. Called to the country by King
Trisong Detsan, the guru brought writing to the country and blended native
beliefs with the Hindu and Buddhist cults of Tantrism, so that Tibet was
under Indian influence after A.D. 750. (Ref. 157)

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Central and Northern Asia: A.D. 801 to 900

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Back to Central and Northern Asia: A.D. 701 to 800

Islam and China each dominated large portions of Central Asia at this time.
Chinese porcelain has been found, dating to this period, in Tarsus and
Cairo, apparently carried from T'ang China through the Tarim Basin and the
Pamirs to the mideast trade routes. (Ref. 58, 8) In an area east of a line
drawn from the Aral Sea to the south end of the Caspian, then designated as
"eastern Persia", the separate Tahirid Dynasty ruled in the early century.
Near the end of the era the northern part was ruled by the Samanid Emirate
and the southern by the Saffarid Emirate (874) from Persia, proper. By A.D.
900, however, the Samanids had taken over the entire area. At that time
Bokhara and Samarkand rivaled Baghdad as centers of art and learning and
the Persian language was used throughout. (Ref. 137) Additional Notes

The Uigurs were chased out of Mongolia in A.D. 840 by the Kirghis Turks
and the former moved to Turf an in the desert, which is now part of
Sinkiang, China, where they reigned for the next 400 years. Those people
eventually converted to Islam and later transmitted their script to the
Mongols. (Ref. 38) The Kirghiz Turks moved on down to take part of
Turkistan and developed almost a Persian culture as they adopted the
Manichean religion. North of western China were the "Western Turks" and
the most western group of these were called "Ghuzz". (Ref. 8, 137)

In southern Siberia in the mountainous border area between Mongolia and
Manchuria, just south of Lake Baikal, were forest hunters who claimed
descent from the Hsiung-nu, but who were more apt to have been related to
the Juan-Juan tribes that were in Mongolia in the 5th century. At any rate,
these are the Mongols that later were to be the warriors of Genghis Khan
and at the end of this 9th century they started to migrate into the Siberian
plain around the Onon River. Some remained hunters and fishermen while
others became pastoral nomads. The latter became the true Mongols,
proper. (Ref. 101)

Note: At the end of this 9th century huge silver deposits were found in
Transoxiania, making it very rich. Its Samanid rulers began to mint vast
quantities of large coins, many of which went to Russia, chiefly through
the Bulgars on the middle Volga. (Ref. 301)

Forward to Central and Northern Asia: A.D. 901 to 1000

Central and Northern Asia: A.D. 901 to 1000

CENTRAL AND NORTHERN ASIA
Back to Central and Northern Asia: A.D. 801 to 900

Just northwest of the western end of the Great Wall of China, the Tanguts (a
Tibetan tribe) founded the powerful kingdom of Hsi-hsia in the areas of
Ninghsia and Kansu. The Khitan Mongols, under their dynastic founder,
Ye-lu A-pao-Chi (907-926) conquered all Inner Mongolia and, as we shall
see later in the chapter, most of Manchuria and northern China. (Ref. 119,
279) To the southwest the Khwarism (Khorezm) Turks took their name
from their ancient and medieval state centered on the basin of the lower
Amu Darya River and in 995 the country was united under the emirs of
north Khwarism whose capital, Urgench, became a major seat of Arabic
learning. (Ref. 38, 8, 125)

Afghanistan fell to the Turks of Turkistan in A.D. 962. The Samanid
Emirate, extending east from Persia, was partially crushed and Transoxiana
lost to the Karakhanid Turks in 990 but it remained for another Turk,
General Mahmud, one of the greatest figures in Central Asian history, to
completely overthrow the Samanids in 999, initiating the Ghaznawid
Emirate in that entire area of southern, central Asia. Bokhara and
Samarkand continued to be great centers of learning and art while the great
Friday Mosque at Herat was already attracting scholars and philosophers
from all over the Islamic world. (Ref. 137, 144)

In Tibet the two wives of one of the kings converted him to Buddhism and
after that Chinese writings were brought into the nation. One such writing,
the "Tanjur" contained medical information. (Ref. 125)

Forward to Central and Northern Asia: A.D. 1001 to 1100

Central and Northern Asia: A.D. 1001 to 1100

CENTRAL AND NORTHERN ASIA
Back to Central and Northern Asia: A.D. 14780

Early in the century Mahmud the Turk, ruler of Afghanistan, moved out of
his base at Ghazni to conquer most of Persia and the Punjab of India, along
with most of central Asia, establishing the greatest empire of this period.
Ghazni equaled Baghdad as a cultural center of Islam. Khwaja Abdallah
Ansari (1006-1088), who was to become the patron saint of Herat in eastern
Afghanistan, lived among the mullahs and doctors of law, preaching his
religious philosophy in the center of this Moslem area. (Ref. 144)
Mahmud's empire was short-lived, however, as the Seljuq Turks descended
from Transoxiana to take Asiatic Islam piece by piece. The great Seljuq
sultan, Malik-Shah, had as his general a still more famous Suleiman. Just
north of the Sel juqs were the Karkhanis Turks and still north of them were
the Ghuzz, parent body of the off-shoot Seljuqs. (Ref. 8, 144, 137)

Still farther north the Uigurs were active on the northwest China border.
Little is known about the great expanse of Siberia specifically at this time,
but certainly one must assume that it was sparsely inhabited with northern
Mongoloid hunters.

Tibet, although previously influenced by Nepal and Kashmir of India, now
began to show a character of its own, particularly in its art work, which
demonstrated special talent in inlays of gold and silver. It was already a
country full of missionaries, monks and monasteries. (Ref. 19, 157)

Forward to Central and Northern Asia: A.D. 1101 to 1200

Central and Northern Asia: A.D. 1101 to 1200

CENTRAL AND NORTHERN ASIA
Back to Central and Northern Asia: A.D. 1001 to 1100

In Khwarizm an enormous army had been built up by Khutbeddin
Muhammad, a Turkish mercenary who had governed the area on behalf of
the Seljuq Turks and then finally declared his independence. The basic
population of this area was still Persian and no match for the fierce Turks
and their Kipchak and Cuman bodyguards. In 1141 Transoxiana fell to the
Karakhitai, Buddhist Mongolians whose khanate stretched over all of
Turkistan. In Afghanistan the Turk Mahmud's empire fell to hordes of semi-
barbarians from the mountainous region of central Afghan called Chor.
Under Ala ad-Din Jahansoz, a powerful new Moslem dynasty was then
established. (Ref. 27, 19)

When the Liao Dynasty was overthrown by the invading Jurchen in the
northern area of China (See CHINA, this chapter), the Liaon Yeg-lu Ta-shih
fled west and found protection among the Uigurs, finally establishing a
Western Liao state in far inner Asia, subjecting the local Moslem Turkic
people, who called the new state "Kara Khitae", meaning "Black Ch'i-tan".
(Ref. 101)

Tibetan art work reached a high cultural level with still more beautiful gold
and silver inlay productions. (Ref. 19)

Forward to Central and Northern Asia: A.D. 1201 to 1300

Central and Northern Asia: A.D. 1201 to 1300

CENTRAL AND NORTHERN ASIA (See map this same
section, next chapter)

Back to Central and Northern Asia: 1101 to 1200

At the turn of the century Ali-ad-Din came to the throne of Khwarizm as
Muhammad IT and he soon added southern Khurasan and its peaceful
Persians to his empire. To the east was the Tranoxiana Empire and to the
northeast of that the powerful Buddhist Empire of Kara Khitae, screening
Islam from the new power developing in Mongolia around Karakorum. It
was in 1206 that Temujin, leader of the Yakka tribe of Mongolians of the
Gobi desert, in council with other tribal leaders of the region, took the title
of Genghis[footnote] Khan (meaning "Lord of the Earth") and started to
lead his soldiers south. (Ref. 137) As the Mongols conquered Kara Khitai,
Ali-ad-Din took Transoxiana with its great wealth and its 500,000 people.
(Ref. 27) Additional Notes

As noted in the introductory material, the spelling of this name varies with
the source - Jenghis, Ginghis, Genghis, Ghingis etc.)

It was the normal procedure of the Mongols to send emissaries ahead,
bearing lavish gifts and suggesting trade, with new regions. Thus, before
attacking Khwarizm in 1220, Mongolian merchants arrived with 500
camels laden with gold, silver, silk and sables. But Ali-ad-Din murdered the
ambassador and the merchants and confiscated the gifts. When still another
ambassador arrived at Samarkand to protest, the Shah, himself, burned the
beards and hair of the escorts and sent the ambassador's head back to
Karakorum. Then with 400,000 Turks and Persian auxiliaries, as well as
thousands more armed slaves, Muhammad Shah sat back and awaited the
arrival of the supposedly small, inferior Mongol army.

But the fate of Khwarizm had been sealed and the first attack occurred at
the city of the original emissary massacre where Genghis Khan's two sons,
Ogedei and Chagati, destroyed the city and killed everyone but the guilty
governor, who was taken back to the Great Khan's headquarters where
molten metal was poured into his eyes and ears until he died. A second

Mongol force, led by Jebe Noyon| footnote] went south with 20,000 men
into Khurasan below the Amu Darya, to draw off any major force there,
while Jochi (also Juchi), another son of the Great Khan, rode west
destroying major fortifications. Genghis, himself, with Subedei Bahadur of
the Reindeer people turned north and then came in from the flank at the
Aral Sea while Jochi came up from the south in a flanking maneuver. After
some very rough battles, the Khwarizmian army was annihilated and
Genghis appeared at the gates of Bakhara, 400 miles behind the main battle
lines. Samarkand fell shortly thereafter and only the Shah escaped, fleeing
westward to the Caspian Sea. Jebe, Subedei and Toguchar followed him at
the rate of 80 miles a day, accepting the surrender of various cities on the
way. The Shah mercifully died of pneumonia before they caught him, so the
Mongol task force then spent the winter on the edge of Azerbaijan. The city
of Tabriz saved itself by the payment of an enormous amount of silver and
thousands of horses. Subedei was summoned home and he covered the
1,200 miles back to Karakorum in seven days. It was on that occasion that
the Great Khan instructed Subedei to take Jebe and make a reconnaissance
through the western steppes of Asia and Russia during the next two years.
(Ref. 27) At about this same time, other Mongol armies were completing
the annexation of the Kara Khitae Khanate in Manchuria and were starting
to conquer China. (Ref. 137)

Jebe had originally been an enemy of the Great Khan but now was a loyal
supporter

This seems a good time to stop a moment and examine in a little more detail
the method of living, the skill of fighting and traveling and other
characteristics of these Mongol people. Their activities represent the last
and most violent assault of nomadic barbarism on civilization. Ethnically
their invasions resulted in the wide dispersal of Turkic peoples over western
Asia, as from the beginning the Mongols augmented their sparse armies
from Turkish tribes, sometimes the latter outnumbering the former and the
Mongol language survived only in the homeland. Their original religion
was an ancestral shamanism, embodied in the Yasa or Law of Genghis
Khan, but early they tolerated Christians, Buddhists and Moslems. (Ref. 8)
The Mongol army was composed of turnens, consisting each of 10,000 men
and divided into 10 minghans of 1,000 men with each minghan further
divided into 10 jaguns of 100 men each and finally down to arbans of 10

soldiers each. The commanders of both the minghans and tumens were
called Noyans and were appointed by the khan, while the jaguns and arbans
elected their own leaders. An army, commanded by an Orlok, consisted of 3
or more tumens of cavalry, several minghans of artillery and engineers. The
more experienced soldiers of ten slashed their cheeks to make thick scars,
thereby stopping beard growth and consequently eliminating the need for
shaving. Each cavalryman carried two bows, at least 60 arrows, a lasso and
a dagger. In addition the light cavalrymen carried a small sword and 2 or 3
javelins, while the heavy cavalrymen catried a scimitar, a battle-axe ora
mace and a 12 foot lance. In their saddlebags were a change of clothing,
cooking pot, field rations (yoghurt, millet, dried meat and kumiz), leather
water bottles, fishing line, files for sharpening arrows, needle and thread
and other tools. The composite bow had a pull of between 100 and 160
pounds and a range of over 350 yards. It was made from layers of horn and
sinew and the string was pulled back by a stone ring worn on the right
thumb for quick release. The horses were thickset, strong with short legs,
but 13 to 14 hands high - at least a hand higher than the average Mongolian
domestic horse of today. A few of these horses may have been even 16
hands high. All, from birth, were trained to follow each other. Mares were
preferred as one could get milk as well as blood and as a last resort flesh, if
necessary. (Ref. 27, 279)

According to Marco Polo[footnote], the Mongols skimmed off cream (for
butter), then dried the skim milk in the sun until dry. They would take this
with them and each morning take a pound out and put it in a leather flask
with water so that while they rode the milk would dissolve and they would
soon have reconstituted milk for breakfast. For a rapid 10 day journey, each
man had a string of 18 horses and would take no provisions, living on the
blood of the horses - piercing veins and drinking about 5/8 pint every 10th
day from each animal. In this way the rider could be sustained without
impairing the mounts. On such a forced trip the soldier would use no fire, in
part because of the danger of being seen and in part because there was
probably no fuel. In general, the nomad diet was high in protein, fat and
vitamins A and B but low in vitamin C (except in Scythian territory).

See map of Marco Polo's journeys on page 753

They got their vitamin C from mare's milk, which is 4 times as high in this
as cow's milk. (Ref. 211) The Mongol fighting tactics were far ahead of
their time. In World War II, both Rommel and Patton were students and
admirers of Subedei, perhaps the greatest tactician of the Mongol generals.
(Ref. 27)

We have discussed the original reconnaissance of the Russian steppe in the
preceding paragraphs in the section on RUSSIA and we shall not repeat that
here, but we need to pick up the narrative as the Mongols were retreating
back to Asia. It has been noted that the Mongol armies had received 10,000
reinforcements under Genghis Khan's son, Jochi, as they defeated the Kama
Bulgars on the upper Volga. They then rode on east to the lands of the
eastern Cuman Kanglis, who had supplied so many soldiers to Muhammed
IT back in 1220 in the original Khwarizm war. Only when they had been
annihilated and the Kangli khan killed were they ready to rejoin the Great
Khan on the Irtish River. En- route Jebe died of a fever.

By this time Genghis was camped in a fertile valley, holding court on a
golden throne in a huge, white pavilion that was capable of holding 2,000
people. Jochi gave his father a gift of over 100,000 horses that he had taken
in tribute from the Kanglis. In two years, these Mongols had already ridden
over 5,500 miles, and their real campaign of conquest into Europe had not
even begun.

The career of that great instigator, Genghis Khan (1207-1227) is the most
dramatic example in all history of the potentialities of nomad warfare.
Superior generalship, mobility of cavalry and what today would be called
"staff work", gave the Mongols superiority over every enemy they
encountered. Genghis, although unbelievably cruel to his enemies and
traitors, was in every other way a surprisingly enlightened and liberal ruler.
His codified laws, eventually governing 50 nations, were far less cruel than
the laws of Islam. Karakorum was a city where churches, mosques and
temples stood side by side. This capital had been visited by William of
Rubruck some forty years before Marco Polo's time, as an emissary of
Louis IX of France. William described a giant silver fountain which had
been constructed by Guillaume Houcher, a French goldsmith, which
contained four spouts which dispensed respectively kumiss (fermented

mare's milk[footnote]), wine, mead and rice wine. Genghis had nearly five
hundred wives and concubines and a preoccupation with wine. On his death
the homeland was bequeathed to his youngest son, Tolui, while the former
empire of Muhammad II (Kh warizm) was given to Chagatai, all the eastern
empire (China) to Ogedai and the western steppes to the sons of Jochi -
Orda and Batu. At that time the Mongol armies were undefeated and the
entire steppe from the Volga to the Amur had been welded into a single,
vast, military confederacy. (Ref. 139, 211, 27)

This was called "cow's milk whiskey" by later Victorians. (Ref. 211)

The death of Genghis did not by any means signal the end of the Mongol
supremacy. The title of Great Khan descended upon Ogedai and Karakorum
was extended so that 500 wagon loads of food were brought in every day.
These wagons, which brought in more than 500,000 bushels of grain each
year from China, took 4 months to make the round trip but such deliveries
supplemented the meat and milk products locally available. (Ref. 279)
Ogedai had gold fountains in the shape of elephants, tigers and horses and
kumiz continually poured from the mouths of each. But like his father, he
too was fond of wine and gradually the control of the empire fell more and
more into the hands of the chancellor, the Chinese Yeh-Lu Ch'u-
Ts'ai[footnote], a Cathayan philosopher, astronomer and physician. It was in
Ogedai's reign that the great Mongol armies made their definitive attack on
Russia and Europe, proper, and it was Ogedai 's death which necessitated
the withdrawal of those forces from Europe, because much political
maneuvering had to done before a new Great Khan could be selected. A
camp was established a few miles from the capital where some 4,000
ambassadors and the retinues of all the Mongol lords and princes gathered.
Finally Kuyuk, son of Toregene, was elected Great Khan. He had Nestorian
clerks and eventually told the visiting friars - John of Italy and Stephen of
Bohemia - that he preferred the Christian religion. However, the letter he
sent back to the pope by these friars stated just the opposite, to the effect
that unless he too (i.e. the pope) came to Karakorum to pay homage, he
would be considered an enemy. These friars had returned as far as Kiev by
June, 1247, some ten years before Marco Polo was born. Although Batu, of
the Golden Horde in Russia had sent an ambassador to Karakoram for the
khan election, he was murdered because Kuyuk did not trust him. A new

army was sent out, not west, but south to complete the conquest of Sung
China, a project which had been started in Genghis’ time. (Ref. 27)
Lamb (Ref. 87) spelled this name "Ye Liu Chutsai"

Mangku, son of Tolui (also Tuli), succeeded as supreme khan in 1251 after
the alcoholic death of Kuyuk at age 42. By that time the great Mongol
Empire, stretching from the Pacific to Europe, had been pretty well divided
into four rather distinct components. Western and southern Russia was the
Khanate of the Golden Horde, while about the Aral Sea was the Khanate of
the White Horde and to their north was the Cheibanid Khanate. The 4th
region was China, itself. To connect the whole empire, however, the
Mongols had a communication system they called Yam, similar to the old
American pony express. There were Yam stations 25 miles apart, guarded
by detachments of soldiers, stretching clear across the empire and
messengers rode at the rate of 120 miles a day. (Ref. 27) An interesting
result of the vast communication network as well as the slower commercial
caravans and armies that marched to and fro across those vast Euro-Asian
distances on a northern route, which was much different than the old Silk
Road, is that this was the apparent method of spread of a new disease to the
West - bubonic plague. Mongol horsemen had penetrated Yunnan and
Burma in 1252 and 1253 where plague was endemic and they apparently
brought the organism back to the steppe where the wild rodents came in
touch with carriers of this new disease and in later centuries that became the
real source of the Pasteurella pestis, which was to repeatedly scourge
Europe. (Ref. 140)

After the death of the Great Khan Mangku in 1259, succession for the first
time was decided by armed conflict. For 4 years Kublai and Arik-Boke
fought for the throne, and in the last part of that period Berke, then ruler of
the Golden Horde also fought with Hulegu of Rum and Persia. Berke had
convinced his troops that Hulegu had murdered the commanders of two
Golden Horde tumens that had been with Hulegu's original forces and that
the current attack was traditional revenge. Berke's forces crossed the
Caucasus, led by Nogai. In the eastern conflict Kublai won but was
immediately so completely absorbed in further fighting with the Sung
Chinese and the Far East that he could not give much attention to the west.
There was therefore a break-up in Asia and eastern Russia into several

khanates, as we have detailed above. In addition to those previously listed
we now add a separate Il-Khan Empire in Persia, proper. (Ref. 8) Kublai
and his successors still apparently looked after the old capital at
Karakorum, as over 500,000 bushels of grain continued to be brought there
from China each year. Tibet remained a part of the empire of the Great
Khan, although retaining its own king. It was in this century that the
Tibetan king also became the lama and ruins of his vast 13th century
fortress can still be seen with its cascading wall down a hillside at Shekar
Dzong. The Tibetan lamas had great prestige and privilege under the
Mongol rulers and their artisans reached a high point in independent
precious metal work. (Ref. 182, 131, 19)

A diagram showing the genealogy of the Mongol khans will be given on the
next page in an attempt to clarify the rather complicated relationships.

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NOTE: Insert: Genealogy of the Conquering Mongol Khans

Note:Genoese boats were sailing the Caspian Sea in this century. (Ref.
292)

Central and Northern Asia: A.D. 1301 to 1400

CENTRAL AND NORTHERN ASIA
Back to Central and Northern Asia: A.D. 1201 to 1300

The old Kipchak area (Turkistan to South Russia) and most of Siberia fell
in this century to the last tornado of nomadism — Timurlane|[ footnote]. This
man, descended in the female line from Genghis Khan, but otherwise
chiefly Turkish in origin, was born south of Samarkand in 1336 and
developed into a nomad of the old savage school, creating an empire of
desolation and piles of skulls. As a young man he was made governor of a
large area under the Mongol conqueror, Tughlak Timor Khan and then
drove the invaders out of Transoxiana (now Uzbekistan) by the time he was
33 years old. For four decades he rampaged through Asia. With one of the
greatest armies ever seen on the- Siberian steppe, he campaigned against
Toktamish of the Golden Horde and soon ruled a vast land south of
Moscow. His watriors wore armor of link mail, carried two bows - one for
rapid shooting and one for long distance, as well as 30 arrows, a small
shield and a scimitar. Each man had two horses. Timur spoke both Turkic
and Persian and surrounded himself with scholars, historians and poets. He
resurrected Samarkand, bringing scientists and philosophers and building
schools and libraries, wide avenues and glittering palaces and mosques. At
its height his empire extended from Turkey to Moscow to Mongolia to
Delhi. As the century ended he was temporarily in control of all of Iraq,
Persia and central Asia - the area known as the Timurid Emirate. (Ref. 220)
Also known as Timur-i-lend (the Persian for "Timur the Lame), Tamerlane
or simply as Timur

In the meantime, the Chinese Ming armies had gained complete control of
Inner Mongolia by 1370 and then they pushed the Mongols out of
Manchuria and Outer Mongolia beyond Karakorum, almost to Lake Baikal
and northwest to Hami, in modern Sinkiang province, opening the gateway
to central Asia. In western Asia (and eastern Russia) the Mongols were not
driven out but became assimilated into the numerically superior Turkish-
speaking warrior population. Subordination to the Great Khan in Peking
ceased to have even ritual significance.

NOTE: Insert Map 42. Asia c1300 and The Empires of Genghis Khan and
Tamerlane

It has been mentioned several times in this outline that the Mongol
horsemen brought plague-infected rodents or at least carried the disease
organism from India into the Eurasian steppe. In this 14th century the
bacillus became endemic among burrowing rodents in the steppe and the
nomad populations became exposed to a lethal infection of a kind never
known before. Radical depopulation and even abandonment of some
excellent pasture land was the result. (Ref. 279)

Tibet remained quite isolated, but Chinese influence began to be evident in
their paintings, side by side with Indian characteristics. It was in this
century that Tibet evolved the theocracy which persisted into the 20th
century, centering the religious and administrative power in one person,
whose succession was assured by the people's belief in reincarnation. The
name "Dalai Lama" was not used, however, until the 16th century. (Ref. 12,
19, 228)

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Back to Central and Northern Asia: A.D. 1301 to 1400

Transoxiana and Samarkand were each ruled by descendants of Timur and
they became rival centers of prosperity and culture equal to any in Europe.
Toynbee (Ref. 220), writing in the middle 1940s, described that culture
along with that of Turkey as the "Turkish-Iranian Islamic Society", still
existing. One cannot help but wonder, in the light of activities in the 1970s
and 80s, if he still would describe these diverse areas as a single culture.
Timur had lived just into this 15th century and was determined to conquer
China and had moved north from Samarkand, with a horde of 800,000.
Camping at Otrar, some 250 miles north of Samarkand in January of 1401,
Timur became ill and died. It was his son Shah Rukh, whom we have seen
took over Persia and a grandson Ulugh Beg, who kept the center land from
India to Iraq, for awhile. Ulugh Beg set up a great observatory and
constructed very accurate astronomical tables.

The battle which Timur had had with the remnants of the Golden Horde
marked the final age of the Mongol conquests, but they were already in
decline. The appearance of plague in humans across the steppe as a result of
the establishment of the new reservoir for Pasteurella pestis in the area
probably was a real factor in undermining Mongol military might, as their
manpower dwindled. There was a decay of urban centers on the steppe,
irrespective of external factors, such as Timur's destructive frays. Caravan
personnel were particularly vulnerable to plague and from this time on new
migrations from the steppe failed to materialize. The opening of the new sea
route to the east around Africa was still another severe blow to the region
and a final factor was the isolationist policies of the Ming Dynasty in
China, which tended to dry up the silk route. The Ming even cut off grain
supplies to Mongolia, as a means of pressuring the steppe people, but the
Mongol response was to go to war and when the Ming retaliated by trying
to invade Mongolia, the Chinese emperor was captured, in 1449. (Ref. 279)
Thereafter the Ming reverted to a completely defensive strategy,

withdrawing from Inner Mongolia, so that even the pretense of Chinese
military domination of Central Asia was dropped. (Ref. 149, 137)

The Cheibanid Khanate, which had existed north of the Aral Sea for some
time, collapsed in 1471 and the great Timurid Emirate finally had to split
into the northern Timurid Emirate of Samarkand and the Southern Emirate
of Herat. (Ref. 137)

In Tibet it was at this time that the theory of the reincarnation of the lamas
was developed. The people were taught that when a lama dies his soul
passes to a new-born boy and so an extensive search goes on each time, to
find the new Dalai Lama. (Ref. 157

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About 1505 the southern, central area of Samarkand, Bukhara and Tashkent
(including the area also known as Khorezm) was invaded from the
northwest by Muslim Uzbeks, formerly called "Sarts" and representing a
remnant of the Golden Horde. Khorezm then became known as the Khanate
of Khiva, after its capital. Kazan and Astrakhan were taken from Islam by
Ivan IV, the Terrible, in mid-century, chiefly with the use of artillery. (Ref.
260) Later an Uzbek leader, Abdullah, extended his rule over parts of
Persia, Afghanistan and even Chinese Turkistan, for a short period. The
little empire then broke up into separate khanates and emirates. (Ref. 38, 8)

Farther north a revived Mongol power under Altan Khan (1550-73) was
giving the Chinese considerable pressure. In the west, the first advance into
Siberia by the Cossack chieftan, Yermak, heralded the Russian eastward
migration. Yermak was backed by a rich merchant family, the Poyarskis,
although the only profitable occupation in Siberia at that time was fur-
trapping. That great land area was occupied sparsely by a great number of
Turko-Mongolian tribes, including the Chukchi, Koryaks and Kamchadali
of the far northeast; Lamuts, Yakuts, Tungusy and Ostyaks north of China;
and Samoyeds, more Ostyaks and Tartars just east of the Ural Mountains.
(Ref. 8, 122) In the arctic north of western Siberia around the mouth of the
Yenisey River reindeer herders lived chiefly off those animals. They rode
and milked the partially tamed ones and ate the wild ones. (Ref. 288)

In Tibet, the name "Dalai Lama" was given to the Tibetan theocrat by a
16th century Mongol ruler and the term has come to mean "Ocean of
Wisdom". (Ref. 228)

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CONAnUBRWN

Central and Northern Asia: A.D. 1601 to 1700

CENTRAL ASIA
Back to Central and Northern Asia: A.D. 1501 to 1600

This great source of the dynamic, nomad hordes, which had periodically
flooded both the East and the West, began to decline in energy. In the far
north beyond the Arctic Circle the Evenk reindeer herders lived,
particularly in the region at the mouth of the Yenissei. They rode their
animals, sitting far forward on their- shoulders, not on their weak backs. As
early as 1614 they paid heavy taxes of furs to the czars. Farther east, but
still within the Arctic Circle, lived the Yakuts, relative newcomers to the
region, apparently having migrated from a southern steppe. They lived in
log houses and used iron, which disseminated from them to the Evenks,
although the two people often clashed. (Ref. 288) South of these people in
Siberia, fur was the thing tempting Russians deeper and deeper into the area
and they reached the Pacific coast in 1649. Only the western portion of
Mongolia (now called "Outer Mongolia") remained independent, while the
southern and eastern part was eventually taken over by China. While the
Manchu Ch'ing dynasty was busy suppressing southern rebels, eastern
Mongols known as Tatars and Khalkas stormed northern China in 1675.
Although at first thrown back by the Manchu emperor, next a western
Mongol chief, Galdan, invaded Mongolia from Central Asia. The emperor's
forces launched three campaigns against him, forcing Galdan to commit
suicide in 1697, and allowing Chinese military colonies at Central Asian
oases of Hami and Turfan. (Ref. 101) The Mongols and adjacent Calmuchs
were converted to the Lamaistic form of Mahayan Buddhism.

Toynbee (Ref. 192) says that this represents an astonishing triumph of a
fossilized relic of religious life of the long extinct primary Indic
civilization, although the connection here escapes me. The old Uzbek areas
northeast of the Caspian were now called the land of the Kalmuks and
Kazakhs. In the old area of Khwarizm, Transoxiana, Ferghana and Chinese
Turkistan there were now independent Turkish, military khanates. (Ref. 8)

In Tibet, the Potala - home, office, castle and fortress of the Dalai Lama —
stands atop a mountain, rising 700 feet above the town of Lhasa. Although
this was started under construction in the 7th century, most of it was built
between 1645 and 1694 when, as indicated in the paragraph above, the
Lamaistic form of Buddhism seemed to have a revival. The Potala is said to
have more than 1,000 rooms, 10,000 altars and 200,000 statues. (Ref. 228)
Late in the century the Chinese Manchus installed an anti-Mongol Dalai
Lama as the ruler of Tibet. (Ref. 101)

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CONDMDUBWNFE

Central and Northern Asia: A.D. 1701 to 1800

CENTRAL AND NORTHERN ASIA
Back to Central and Northern Asia: A.D. 1601 to 1700

The so-called western Mongols (Eleuthes, Kalmuks or Dzungars) gave
China a good deal of trouble early in the century, but finally in 1,735 the
Mongols ceded the eastern end of Turkistan to the Ch'ing and then in 1,759
gave all of Chinese Turkistan, the area called Sinkiang (New Dominion)
province. This then, resulted in China ruling all of outer Mongolia west to
Lake Balkhash and then south to the Tarim basin and eastern Turkistan.

Farther south, just east of the Caspian Sea, a thousand miles of desert was
fought over by two Moslem khans, one of Khiva and one of Bokhara. One
of Peter I's Russian armies confronted the former and ended up being
treacherously slain. There was continuous warfare also in the Afghanistan
area. The Afghans started a campaign against the Persians at Kandahar in
1,711, with Mir Vais, a Sunnite Ghilzai chieftain leading them. By 1,722
Mahmud, another Afghan, had defeated a central Persian army and made
himself shah of that land. Somewhat later, however, Nadir Kuli, a powerf ul
chief of the Afshar tribe of Khorosan, defeated the Afghans (and later also
the Turks, with Russian help) and then went on to invade India. After
Nadir's death in 1,747 a general of his, Ahmed Shah, continued to rule
Afghanistan, although by the end of the century he had lost all of Nadir's
Indian territory. Ahmed Shah called his Afghan dynasty the
Durani[footnote] and the people still of ten use that name for themselves. It
was in this century that an Indo-European speaking people, the Pathans,
came up from Pakistan, elbowing out the inhabitants from the southern and
southeastern parts of Afghanistan, forcing them off the best lands and
thereafter living a half-Afghan half-Indian existence. (Ref. 144)

Trager (Ref. 222) says this is the Barkzai Dynasty.

Siberia was being opened up by the Russians at about the same time that
America was by the west Europeans. Wild animals (foxes, hares, beavers,
bears, wolves) and innumerable birds (ducks, cranes, swans, pelicans,
geese, bitterns, woodcocks and grouse) occupied the various waterways and

swamps. Hunters and merchants were attracted even to the almost empty
Kamchatka peninsula by fur bearing animals. The skins were taken to
Irkutsk and thence either to China or to Moscow and the West. Taxes were
collected in the form of precious and marketable furs for the czar. Sea otter
fur became in world-wide demand and ships, built and outfitted at Okhotsk,
used large crews to fight off hostile native Siberians[ footnote] as they
worked their way even to the Aleutians, catching otters at the mouths of
rivers. Expeditions were supplied for 4 year trips. When Kamchatka was
cleared of its beautiful animals, the hunters went on to the American coast,
even to the San Francisco area. (Ref. 260)

These were the Chukchi, who repeatedly defeated the Cossacks and were
the last Siberian natives to submit to Russian rule. They were reindeer and
sea hunters, who had adapted remarkably well to the severe Arctic climate.
(Ref. 288)

Early in the century (1717) Tibet had been invaded by the Mongols, but the
Chinese emperor sent in armies to drive them out and Tibet became a
political appendage of China by 1720. (Ref. 101) A definitive protectorate
was established in 1750. At the end of the century expeditions were sent
from southern Tibet into Nepal. (Ref. 175, 8)

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ONMAUORWNPE

Central and Northern Asia: A.D. 1801 to 1900

CENTRAL ASIA
Back to Central and Northern Asia: A.D. 1701 to 1800

We mentioned above something about the continual increase in Russian
migration to Siberia in this century. Gold resources there were only worked
after 1820. Going from west to east, the chief Arctic peoples of Siberia
were Evenks, Yakuts, Yukaghir, Chuvan and Chukchi, the last reaching
right to the Bering Strait. The population of that northern Asian region grew
from about 500,000 in 1720 to 1,400,000 in 1811 and then increased again
markedly by the end of the century.

Perhaps the center of greatest interest in Asia, however, was Afghanistan.
The Pathans continued to sweep clear across the country, acting like feudal
barons, becoming the dominant ethnic group and occupying virtually every
post in government and administration, although they also became
landowners, shopkeepers and peasants. The ruling Durani line ended in
1826 when Dost Mohammed of the Barakzais Dynasty gained power.
Trouble almost immediately developed as the British attempted to use
Afghanistan as a buffer between Russia and British holdings in India. This
resulted in a series of wars in which Indian soldiers fought under their
British officers against the Afghans.

In the First Afghan War of 1838 to 1842 the British took Kabul, along with
other major cities, but the natives reorganized and soon massacred the
British-Indian troops so that only 20 British survivors returned to India. But
the British came back again in the

Second Afghan War of 1878-79, with the eventual ousting of the current
Afghan, pro-Russian ruler and the establishment of Abdu-R-Rahuman Khan
as a pro-British emir. With the western financial backing he did much to
establish order in that rather unruly country, and he lived until just after the
turn of the century, ruling under British supervision. (Ref. 260, 8, 144, 175)

To the north of Afghanistan, East Turkistan had been dominated by China
until 1865 when Russian troops invaded the Khanate of Kokand and took
Tashkent. On the east shore of the Caspian Sea, Khiva was an independent
khanate until it too was taken over by Russia in 1873. Kokand, north-east of
Khiva, held off the Russians only until 1876. The territories of the Kazakhs
and Kirghiz had been consumed by Russia as early as 1854[footnote] (Ref.
8)

Even Manchuria and Korea came under Russian influence until after war
with Japan early in the next century

Most of the people of Tibet were serfs, attached to an estate by birth,
although a few were tenant farmers with 95% of the land owned by 3
groups: Nobles, consisting of less than 200 families; monasteries, with
120,000 monks and 13,000 nuns; and the government, consisting of 333
lamas and 280 lay nobles. In outlying areas there was a nomadic culture.
There was no shifting from one class to another, except that almost any boy
could enter a monastery. Thus 3/4 of the Tibetan males labored to support
the monastic 1/4. Since the monks were celibate, greatly reducing the
number of potential male parents, polygamy was accepted among those
who could afford it. Among the less wealthy, brothers shared a wife as a
method of keeping the family intact. (Ref. 228)

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ONAORWNP

Geographical Presentation of Europe
Back to Introduction to the Method of Geographical Presentation

The semi-diagrammatic map of Europe below demonstrates that if one
eliminates Russia, the land mass involved is scarcely larger than the NEAR
EAST. We should also note that the bulk of Europe lies at a latitude north of
both the Black and the Caspian Seas and that only a small portion of Siberia
lies farther north than European Russia. As indicated on the plate, these two
portions of the Soviet Union have traditionally been separated by the Ural
Mountain region. It is easy to see how early mariners from Norway and the
British Isles could sail directly west to Iceland and then on to Greenland
and America. Europe will be discussed in the text under several
subdivisions which, in later centuries, will be further divided. These
sections will be noted below.

SOUTHERN EUROPE

This division will be discussed with four sub-sections. First will be the
eastern Mediterranean islands which modern authorities are considering as
the site of the first truly European societies (in contrast to being a part of the
Near East), These include the Cyclades, Crete, Rhodes, Cyprus and even
Malta. The second area will be Greece and the third the upper Balkans
which includes present day Yugoslavia, Bulgaria, Romani and Albania.
Historically other countries have occupied this region, such as Macedonia,
Serbia, Thrace, etc. Lastly the division will have Italy, with some comments
about Sicily, Sardinia and Corsica from time to time.

CENTRAL EUROPE

Arbitrarily this will include five sub-sections - Germany, Austria, Hungary,
Czechoslovakia and Switzerland. Although Hungary and Czechoslovakia
are now usually considered a part of eastern Europe because of present
ideologies, we have put them in Central Europe because of their long
political associations with Austria and Germany.

WESTERN EUROPE

These are the nations along the Atlantic coast, thus Spain, Portugal, France,
the Netherlands and Belgium and finally the British Isles. The latter will be
further broken down at times into England, Scotland, Ireland and Wales.

SCANDINAVIA

In addition to the expected sub-sections of Norway, Sweden and Denmark,
this division will include Finland. Although originally genetically different
from the true Scandinavian countries, Finland was a part of Sweden for
some 600 years and still has Swedish as one of its two official languages.
On occasions there will also be comments about Iceland.

EASTERN EUROPE

This will include the southern Baltic countries such as Poland, Old Prussia,
Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia as well as European Russia.

Europe (This map was obtained from
http://english. freemap.jp/index.html and is
used with permission under a Creative
Commons Attribution 3.0 license.)

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7. Pacific

Europe: Beginning to 8000 B.C.

EUROPE

We have mentioned earlier that one of the oldest skeletons of homo erectus
is one from Swanscombe, England, found with simple tools made of flint
pebbles and associated with elephants' vertebrae. Continental examples of a
somewhat similar man have been found at Heidelberg and recently not far
from Budapest. At the early state of the final glaciation (Wurm glacier),
perhaps 50,000 to 60,000 years ago, there were wedge-shaped stones, axes
and spears made in central Europe. This was the time of Neanderthal man,
who apparently has no direct descendants today and who represented an
evolutionary development of primitive man which for some unknown
reason came to a dead end and disappeared. He used pointed scrapers,
triangular knife blades, ceremonial burials and heated shelters as well as
bone needles. Europe seemed to be the home of these men, although some
have been identified in other areas. The archaeologists call their culture the
"Mousterian" after Mousteir, France, the location of the original finds.
Theirs was a reindeer-dependent culture, in which men used "kits" of some
sixty-three different tools. They were basically cave dwellers, particularly
in Spain and France. At this time there was a land bridge from England to
France and the glacier covered the northern half of the British Isles and all
Scandinavia, northern continental Europe and parts of Russia. The Black
Sea, aS mentioned earlier, was small and a fresh water lake that at some
time was connected to the great sea extending through the Caspian to the
Aral. H.G. Wells (Ref. 229) thought that this great sea might have been
connected to the Arctic, but modern thought makes it a northern arm of
Tethys. (Ref. 229, 100)

In the Lower Paleolithic Age back as far as 100,000 years ago there were
flake tools of the Clactonian Culture and later the Acheulian Culture in
Britain. There was some occupation in the Upper Paleolithic in perhaps
about 12,000 B.C. and this homo sapiens culture which followed the
Neanderthal Mousterian, showed an increased tool "kit" with ninety-three
types of chipped stone tools, besides a large group of bone tools. Between
30,000 and 10,000 B.C. most of central and western Europe was probably
uninhabitable because of cold and ice, except in the summer, but the waters

of the Atlantic and its more southern latitude gave southwestern France
respite from the cold and thus was a favorite place for the Paleolithic
hunter. Early man here was a killer of game and part-time cannibal. In the
"fish gorge" of the Dordogne region of France there appeared, about 25,000
B.C., short, baited toggles with tines attached,- the first fish hooks.

About 15,000 years ago huge herds of ruminant animals roamed the plains
of central and Western Europe and they were most useful to early man as
sources of meat, clothes, tent fabrics and frames and even as fuel (animal
fat). The mammoth was hunted particularly in southern Russia and
Czechoslovakia. Early man was already divided into subcultures in the
Upper Paleolithic level with a Perigordian (Chatelperronian) level
appearing as the earliest in western Europe about 35,000 B.C.; a Gravettian
in Czechoslovakia about 27,000 B.C. (extending into southern Russia); and
the Aurignacian culture of the Cro-Magnon man at 32,000 B.C. in Europe
proper. The latter may, however, have originated in the Near East. Strangely
marked bones and stones found all over in these periods and extending up
to the Mesolithic period of the post-ice age have recently been interpreted
as notational, probably related to tabulation of the lunar periodicity, and
indicating skill and intelligence and sophistication, as we have previously
mentioned.

It was after Neanderthal man, which is after 35,000 years ago, that clothing
and ornamentation can be identified. The best example of the use of beads
sewn on clothing comes from Russia, where a skeleton was accompanied
by shells about the head, chest and on the legs, suggesting trousers. On the
steppes, where wood was in short supply, many huts were made from the
tusks and bones of mammoth, which also formed the major meat supply in
Eastern Europe 25,000 years ago.

Two categories of European art are recognized, a mobile or home art
(decorated tools, small carvings, etc.) and then the fixed works of caves and
rock paintings, engravings and sculptures. The earliest art dates to the upper
Paleolithic, between ten and thirty thousand years ago. The most developed
art was in the so-called Magdalenian era, with the famous cave paintings of
Spain and France, of which more than a hundred have been found, perhaps
representing a period of over 20,000 years. The pigments used appear to be

red and yellow ochre, manganese or carbon for black and china clay for
white. Some of the color may have been mixed with fat and the paint was
applied by finger, chewed sticks or fur for brushes. The high quality of this
art, of essentially the same degree of excellence as that of today [footnote]
is further evidence that man of that day had the same brain and intellectual
potential as today.

This is Arnold Toynbee's opinion. (Ref. 220)

A short glacial period between 9,000 and 8,000 B.C. reached its peak in less
than a century and disappeared rapidly, but for several hundred years the
forests of England, West Germany and the Low Countries had a climate
with tundras, howling winds and drifting snow. By about 8,000 B.C. fishing
nets from twisted fibers or thongs had been invented. Turnips, onions and
large radishes date back to prehistoric times. Ireland was probably
uninhabited until about 8,000 B.C. The earliest inhabitants of southern
Scandinavia entered between 12,000 and 8,000 B.C. following after the
retreating ice, and forming primitive hunting communities. (Ref. 8, 226,

Forward to Europe: 8000 to 5000 B.C.
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7. The Near East

8. Pacific

Europe: 8000 to 5000 B.C.

SOUTHERN EUROPE

Crete and the Aegean Islands were sites of agricultural settlements
spreading over from Asia Minor between 7,000 and 6,000 B.C. (A little
different view is suggested in the next chapter). A mysterious people whose
place names and therefore language was not Greek, spread over the eastern
Mediterranean perhaps as early as 6,000 B.C. Linguist Leonard Palmer
believes there is a definite Middle Eastern flavor to the words left behind,
and traces them to the Luvians, a people from the hills of Turkey. "Corinth",
"Olympus" and "Knossos" are among those names that are not Greek. The
oldest houses below Knossos on Crete, in a neolithic layer dated at 6,000
B.C., were made of mud bricks hardened in fire, a mid-eastern technique
never seen later on the island. The first settlers of Crete, whoever they were,
found a heavily forested land with vast stands of cypress, oak, chestnut and
pine, unlike modern, denuded Crete. Cyprus had a Neolithic population by
the 4th millennium B.C. (Ref. 109, 215, 88, 41)

The central mountains of Greece are a series of limestone ridges running
southeast into the Aegean Sea where peaks form a series of islands. The
cultivable valleys on the coast are more accessible from the sea than from
each other or the rest of Europe. Therefore the east coast of Greece
participated in the agricultural settlement of the Aegean via the sea from the
east. Domesticated sheep were in Greece by 7,200 B.C. The Balkans had
agricultural settlements and painted and impressed-ware cultures from
6,000 to 5,000 B.C. spreading up from Greece. The economy was based on
sheep, wheat and legumes. Karanovo, Bulgaria, is an example, with mound
settlement debris forty feet high. Similar culture spread all along the coasts
of the Adriatic, Sicily and southern France. Excavations in the Maritsa
Valley (Valley of the Roses) in central Bulgaria indicate plastered mud-
houses over wood framework present by 6,000 B.C. Each generation of
people, however, would demolish their old house and build a new one on
the site, so that after several thousand years, some of the resulting mounds
rose as high as fifty feet. These people at 6,000 B.C. had ovens to bake
bread, graphite decorated pottery and by 5,000 B.C. had early smelting and
casting of copper, perhaps entirely independently of similar developments

in the Near East. Lepenski Vir, on the right bank of the Danube in present
day Yugoslavia, was an ancient city site dating before 5,000 B.C. It is
characteristic of the work of hunters and fishermen of a pure Old Stone Age
tradition before houses took on a permanent form.

Genetic studies of European peoples have indicated that farming advanced
from the Middle East into Europe, starting at about 7,000 B.C. with a radial
rate of advance of about one kilometer a year, and this advance occurred by
diffusion of the farmers themselves (demic diffusion) rather than by the
simple spread of technology from one population to another (cultural
diffusion). This is evidenced by the fanning out of certain alleles in gene
frequencies, spreading in Europe from southeast to northwest and also from
the Near East to North Africa, Arabia and East Africa - and from Southwest
Asia to the Indus Valley.

Archeological evidence is also plentiful on the European continent, but not
so in the other areas. Sardinia and northern Algeria are more nearly similar
to the Near East than the rest of the Central Mediterranean, and Sardinia has
very low Rh negative frequency and other frequencies that are most
unusual. The archeology there shows first that the earliest occupation was
Neolithic - with no Paleolithic antecedent and secondly that there was
substantial colonization by both Phoenicians and Carthaginians. The first
farmers, however, probably came from southern Italy. The island Melos, in
the Aegean, has a distinctive variety of obsidian, and there is evidence that
Greek and Cretan sailors exploited it and brought it to their own countries

Notes

CENTRAL EUROPE

The majority of middle Europeans passed into the Mesolithic Age in this
period. There were no longer large animals to hunt, perhaps only deer, and
man augmented his diet with nuts and berries. The dog was present in the
human encampments and boats were used. Farming, which appeared in the
Danube basin about 6,000 B.C. spread to the North European plain about
5,000 B.C. They used wooden saws fitted with chipped flint teeth. Neolithic
pottery called "Bandkeramik", which was characterized by incised parallel

lines above the neck, appeared in areas of south and north central Europe
and accompanied the gene gradient which we described above. Such farmer
migrations involved more people and have a better potential for increase in
population than "barbarian" invasions which have only limited numbers and
not enough people to effect gene frequencies strikingly. This farming and
the associated pottery spread rapidly along the main river valleys, especially
the Danube and the Rhine, at the end of this period about 5,000 B.C.
Although much controversy still exists, there is much evidence to suggest
that the Indo-European speaking people were actually a single group or
people at this time, living in the Danube Valley. We shall examine some
other ideas about this later. (Ref. 136, 215, 143)

Swiss lake dwellers with domesticated dogs and plow oxen collected or
grew flax for use in making fish lines and nets and general utility ropes by
about 6,000 B.C. They also made a bread from crushed grain and had true
pottery. (Continue on page 50)

WESTERN EUROPE

Central France and most of Spain had Mesolithic cultures while southern
Spain had coastal agricultural settlements that were extensions of Adriatic
and southern France cultures. The very southern part of England was not
covered by the last glacier, and recent discoveries and dating techniques
suggest a very early inhabitation of that area. Dogs were domesticated by
tribes in the British Isles by 7,300 B.C. Churchill (Ref. 29) says that at
7,000 B.C. there was still no English channel and Britain was a promontory
of Europe. There was land in what is today the North Sea, also, and men
lived there at 6,000 B.C. when there was continuous tundra from Jutland
across to England. These men of the north were reindeer hunters, coming
up from central Europe. As the glaciers retreated the animals depending on
snow water had to have salt. Where human beings accumulated, the
reindeers would accept human urine as a source of salt and so semi-
domestication became possible, although these animals never became
subject to true domestication. Britain may have become separate from the
continent by about 5,900 B.C. In Ireland wattle huts date back as far as
7,000 B.C. along the coastal routes and inland waterways. Most of the Irish,
particularly in the north and west have blood type O, pointing to a strong

pre-Celtic physical inheritance which is believed to have come via the
Atlantic from the Mediterranean area. Hunter-gathers of Western Europe
and probably the British Isles have close to 100% Rh negative genes, with
later positive genes arriving from the east and southeast of Europe. (Ref.
143, 215, 117, 29) (Continue on page 51)

SCANDINAVIA

Even at 8,000 B.C. the last glacier had retreated sufficiently to leave all of
Denmark and southern Sweden free of ice and there were men living there,
eating oysters, fish and seal meat. Denmark and all islands guarding the
approaches to the Baltic were settled by Lapps and Finns. These people
were probably of European origin although both spoke a related Finno-
Ugric tongue, originating in the Urals far to the east. Denmark was then one
continuous stretch of land, not multiple islands and peninsulas as today, and
there was one large water channel across Sweden via the great lakes to the
Kattegat. The Baltic Sea and the Sound may not have existed as such. A
Neolithic rather than a Mesolithic culture existed in this portion of the
world. (Continue on page 53)

EASTERN EUROPE

There were good supplies of flint in eastern Poland, and the miles of rivers,
lakes and timber afforded resources for early man. The great water system
including the Black and Caspian Seas along with the Ural Mountains acted
as a barrier between the Asiatic peoples and the Indo-Europeans. Some
would locate the origin of the Indo-European speaking peoples at this time
just north of the Black Sea, and certainly there were sparsely scattered
people throughout all of northern European Russia up to the edge of the
retreating glacier. McEvedy (Ref. 136) calls all of these northern Stone Age
people "Finns", but most would probably prefer the term "Arctic peoples"
or "Lapps". Certain scholars include the forefathers of present day Lapps
among the Paleo-arctic groups, while others maintain that they are Alpine
and came from central Europe and were pushed north. They do not all
belong to a single physical type and do not belong to a single blood group.
Their Finno-Ugric language is close to Finnish but the two are not mutually

intelligible and there are three mutually unintelligible Lappish dialects.

Today practically all Lapps are bilingual. (Ref. 229, 61, 88) (Continue on
page 53)

Note:In Italy near Foppe de Nadro there are many rock art figures,
including a scene depicting a praying human figure surrounded by dogs.

This was supposedly created by the "Dog Cult" people about 5000 B.C.
(Ref. 299)

Europe: 5000 to 3000 B.C.

EUROPE

It was warmer in Europe after about 5,000 B.C. than at any time before or
since. (Ref. 91) The origin of the original Indo-European language speakers
remains an unsolved mystery, with some claiming these people started on
the Baltic shores, others in the Balkan portion of the Danube and still others
in the steppes of southern Russia and on north of the Caspian Sea. The date
of origin also remains undecided with some believing it dates back to
between 6,000 and 5,000 B.C. and others, particularly some linguists, to a
much later date. We shall begin our discussion of these ideas in the next
chapter.

SOUTHERN EUROPE

A race of dark whites, perhaps akin to the Iberians of Spain and the
Georgians of the Caucasus, developed an island civilization as early as
4,000 B.C. centered on Crete, but apparently with colonies on Cyprus,
Greece, Asia Minor, Sicily and southern Italy as important parts of the
whole. Their language is uncertain and their early writing has not yet been
deciphered, but they had early trade and contacts with Egypt and may very
well have even preceded the classical known civilizations of Egypt and
Mesopotamia. Reed boats and reed boat illustrations on pottery have been
found throughout the Mediterranean from Mesopotamia, Egypt, the coast of
Syria, Lebanon, Cyprus, Crete, Corfu, Malta, Italy, Sardinia, Libya, Algeria
and out through the Straits of Gibralter. As mentioned in a previous chapter,
recent carbon dating corrections indicate the possible presence of advance
civilizations on some of these islands prior to the more classical ones on the
continents. The old Roman belief that Lixus, on the Atlantic coast was the
oldest city in the world, supports the possible hypothesis that civilization
moved eastward toward Egypt and not the reverse.

An interesting side-light is the recent newspaper report from Russia,
detailing the findings of ancient, buried human buildings and walls of a city

far below the ocean surface about one-half way between Portugal and the
Madeira islands. Again the question of the "Lost continent of Atlantis" is
mentioned, but it is perhaps of some moment that the area described and
allegedly photographed under water is almost directly out to sea from
Lixus. We do know now that the spiral decorations of buildings on Malta
date before 3,000 B.C. and that copper was mined on Cyprus probably as
early as 4,000 to 3,000 B.C. (Ref . 95,178,224,18)

Just before the close of the period under review, a civilization called the
"Cycladic" existed all along the shores of the Mediterranean Sea and seems
to have been the highest culture of the times. Inland at about the same time
the ancient Helladic or Mycenaean civilization began to develop on the
northern plains of Greece. Professor Ivan Benedikov, Bulgarian
archaeologist (Ref. 171), says that there is evidence of an ancient Thracian,
Indo-European culture in the area of Bulgaria and that they produced gold
ornaments, figurines and pottery. This is reinforced by the beliefs of
Professor Colin Renfrew (Ref. 179) who feels that the fantastic gold
omaments, some weighing thirteen pounds, found at Verna, Bulgaria on the
Black Sea, represent the oldest gold-working known, antedating anything of
this type in the Near East. Copper tools were made in Romania, Hungary
and Bulgaria as early as 4,500 B.C. This dating has been confirmed by the
British Museum. (Ref. 164)

Now some very interesting theoretical propositions must be discussed with
relation to the population of ancient Greece. Were the indigenous people
known to inhabit the peninsula after 6,000 B.C. the same who later became
known as the Mycenaeans, or were the latter invading conquerors who
overcame the originals? If the former is true, then, since the Mycenaeans
spoke an early Greek language, there must have been Indo-European
speakers in the area by 6,000 B.C. But some linguists say this cannot be.
Another alternative is the idea championed by Professor Marija Gimbutas,
that Kurgans from the lower Volga steppes migrated by land and sea
(Vikings of the 4th millennium B.C.)[footnote] to all the Balkans and the
Greek peninsula about 2,300 B.C. and became the Achaeans[ footnote].
(Ref. 171, 179, 88, 215)

Ref. 215, page 268

"Achaeans" is often used interchangeably with "Mycenaeans"

CENTRAL EUROPE

The Danubian I Neolithic Culture which spread from the Near East, now
reached well up into Germany, and this is usually described as an Indo-
European culture. Village-based agriculture was present in Hungary by
5,000 B.C. In Switzerland the lake dwellers, with houses on stilts, built
either in the lakes or on adjacent marshy ground as early as 5,000 B.C. The
extreme north of central Europe, however, was still subarctic, with only
hunting tribes following the herds. New peoples introduced mixed farming
in central Europe about 4,400 B.C. These Neolithic peoples lived in villages
consisting of six to thirteen wooden longhouses averaging about 325 feet
long, and they used the so-called Linear pottery. They grew wheat by a
slash and burn method and kept cattle, sheep and pigs. This is the culture
which spread into northern France and Belgium.

WESTERN EUROPE

Impressed-ware pottery people lived all along the coast of the western
Mediterranean by 6,000 B.C. The island of Mallorca in the Balearics, about
125 miles from the eastern coast of Spain, was definitely inhabited by man
in the 5th millennium B.C., co-existing with ruminant artiodactyl mammals.
There were Bowl Culture agricultural settlements in France, northern Spain
and England in the 4th millennium and these people were probably distinct
from the Windmill Hill groups which we shall identify later, and of the old
Iberian or Western Mediterranean race, which may have spread by boat up
the Atlantic coast. Small boats were definitely in use for coastal transport
by 5,000 B.C. In Belgium a flint mine of about 4,300 B.C. has been
discovered which required the miners to go through about thirty feet of
unstable gravel and sand to reach the flint. The tunnels were shored inside
and at the bottom the mine fanned out into a web of galleries. The farmers
of Belgium and northern France of this era came from Germany between
4,000 and 3,000 B.C. and built large farm houses and used Linear pottery of
the tradition of central Europe. In contrast, the people of France, using
Chassey pottery after 3,500 B.C. developed a separate Neolithic farming

group.

The earliest flint mine of Britain was in Sussex and has been dated to about
4,300 B.C. The area of the Salisbury plain in southwestern England was
inhabited by the Windmill Hill people by about 4,000 B.C., coming from
the continent. They were a farming people with cattle, goats, pigs, sheep,
dogs and wheat, who added fish and shell fish to their diet. They built at
least seventeen known enclosures (and probably actually many more) in
this area of England with the largest of these on top of Windmill Hill about
one and one-half miles northwest of Avebury, and thus the origin of their
archeological name. This particular causeway enclosure was built about
3,250 B.C. and originally consisted of three concentric circles, the largest
being 1,200 feet in diameter, covering twenty-one acres. Some 1,300
pottery vessels have been recovered from this spot, and it is thought to have
been more or less continuously used for over one thousand years. This, and
the other similar constructions were probably used for ritual or ceremonial
centers rather than for habitation. When these Windmill Hill people arrived
in England, about 4,000 B.C., it was the end of the Mesolithic Age in
Britain, and there were certainly other people already there living as semi-
nomads, making flint and stone tools for cutting and shaping timber, red-
deer antlers and skins. Most of southern England was heavily forested, but
Wessex, with chalk and limestone, had lighter vegetation and was attractive
to the immigrating stock breeders and agriculturalists. Some feel that cattle
may have been shipped to England from the continent as early as 5,000
B.G;

The circular enclosures were not the only mysterious constructions of the
Salisbury plains in those early times. The 4th millennium B.C. was the
period of the "long barrows" of which there are some 260 in Britain with
148 of them in the Wiltshire country area. The best known of these is the
West Kennet Long Barrow, located some one-half mile south of Avebury.
Constructed at about 3,600 B.C. it is three hundred forty feet long and
seventy-five feet wide at its widest eastern end and eight feet high. It was
originally surrounded by a curb of stones. The eastern one-eighth of the
barrow is a stone tomb with five carefully made chambers in which forty-
five skeletons have been found. At the entrance are many upright stones,
lined up at right angles to the axis of the mound. No function has been yet
identified for the western seven-eighths of the barrow.

The first Neolithic Age sites of Ireland are found in County Tyrone, dating
from about 3,700 B.C. onwards. The Sandhills Ware Pottery people there
exploited the salmon from the Boyne River and by 3,250 lived in
rectangular, timber houses. The forests were cleared and cereals, oxen,
sheep, goats and pigs were raised, perhaps after the addition of the
immigrants related to the Windmill Hill people mentioned above.

Next we must discuss the mysterious and problematical megaliths which
have been found all over the Mediterranean islands, along the coasts of the
Iberian peninsula, France, Britain and southern Scandinavia. Traditionally it
has been taught that the 2,500 B.C. period was the one of this megalithic
culture, but recent correction of carbon dating by bristle-cone pine
correlation has put the Atlantic megaliths back another 800 years to before
3,000 B.C. One theory is that this culture was based on a religion spread by
priests and merchants (perhaps from Malta?), but as we shall see when we
discuss some of these remaining monuments in the next chapter, their
function, at least in some, appears to have been far greater than any simple
ritual. It has been estimated that there are at least 50,000 of these megaliths
in Western Europe and countless numbers of others must have been
destroyed through the ages. Recently there has been speculation that the
original megalith builders may have spread from Britain southward, rather
than the reverse.

These immigrants also settled in Ireland and western mainland coastal
areas, but avoided the Midlands. In this period of global optimal climate,
there were prehistoric farms in Scotland and Northern England in latitude
elevations where today no agriculture is feasible. At about 3,000 B.C. this
Eden terminated with a sharp return of colder weather (Ref. 227, 176, 136,

SCANDINAVIA

At 5,900 B.C. there were stupendous geological changes still occurring in
the north. Men had lived in the area now covered by the North Sea but as
the glaciers melted and receded, the earth's crust, previously dented by the
weight of the ice, began to rise and it is still rising throughout most of

Sweden today. South of this, the waters poured into the North Sea and over
much of Denmark, so that the main part of this land remained attached to
Europe only by a thin stalk at Holstein and the Danish tribes became
isolated and remained virtually so for some centuries. The Danes knew how
to sail and canoe and had flint tools and weapons. All southern Scandinavia
and the Baltic settlements of this era had the Funnel Rim pottery. Rock
scribings of petroglyphs hewn into or occasionally painted on rock faces
representing animals have been found all over the Scandinavian peninsula,
as well as in Finland and Russia, dating back to at least 5,000 B.C. Most of
these are life-size and are outline drawings in naturalistic style, although
another type with stylized animals has been found at Vengen and Ausevik,
Norway and Namforsen in Sweden. Just after 4,000 B.C. (some say earlier)
contact with Europe proper increased with the result that new people
growing barley and wheat and raising herds of cattle, sheep and pigs
migrated into the Scandinavian area. (Were these the same as the Windmill
Hill people in England?). Like other areas in Western Europe, this was also
the era of megalithic tombs, of which some thousands still stand in southern
Scandinavia. Due to the very warm climate which developed after 5,000
B.C., vines grew in southern Norway and the whole of Scandinavia had
mixed and deciduous forests. (Ref. 8, 88)

EASTERN EUROPE

There is archeological evidence of human habitation on the southern plains
of Russia dating far back into prehistoric times, and nomadic peoples
roamed the country throughout the centuries of this chapter. Of particular
interest are the Kurgans, known to live on the lower Volga even in 5,000
B.C. (See also SOUTHERN EUROPE, this chapter). They had horses,
loved to fight and buried their dead under tumuli. They may later have
migrated to Greece to become the Mycenaeans. Marija Gimbutas of
U.C.L.A. thinks these people are the original Indo-Europeans and that about
4,000 B.C. they expanded into the Danube basin and down into the Balkan
peninsula from there. Most archeologists would deny that they are the
original Indo-Europeans but do agree that at sometime, probably 3,500 to
3,000 B.C., these people did over-run much of Europe, using wheeled carts
and bronze weapons.

Wild grapes were brought under cultivation in the Caucasus in the 4th
millennium B.C. The Finns (or Lapps?) were endemic in northern Russia
and occupied all northern climes outside the area of Neolithic Culture. The
Linear Pottery Culture spread from Hungary around the northern edge of
the Carpathians into Russia in the mid-5th millennium and agriculture
spread through the Volga-Don region from the Danube by about 4,500 B.C.
Central, east Europe was in the late copper age after 3,500 B.C., as the
Carpathians supplied plenty of copper and later gold and tin. (Ref. 45, 8,
215, 211, 88, 222)

Forward to Europe: 3000 to 1500 B.C.

Europe: 3000 to 1500 B.C.

SOUTHERN EUROPE

Back to Europe: 5000 to 3000 B.C.

EASTERN MEDITERRANEAN ISLANDS

The British Museum has displays indicating the original civilization in the
Aegean and eastern Mediterranean should be called the "Cycladian",
existing from 3,000 to 2,000 B.C. and to be considered separate from the
Cretan or Minoan Civilization which followed[footnote]. Although, as
noted in the last chapter, people with an advanced Neolithic Culture lived
on Crete from 6,000 B.C. onward, the Bronze Age started only about 2,600
B.C.

Dr. Frank Stubbings (Ref. 215, page 114) believes that the Cycladic and
Minoan originated at about the same time (2,800 B.C.) and existed side by
side, along with the Mycenaean on the Greek mainland

There are some who believe that the Egyptian and Anatolian influences
stimulated the development, but most now feel that this was a purely local
progress over a thousand year period. For the first 600 years or so of this
Bronze Age, civilization was rather low key, and it appears that there may
have been folks of several different origins on the island. Homer was
probably truthful when he described three peoples - the Eteocretans, the
Kydonians and the Pelasgians. The first of these may be considered the
initial truly Cretan people, perhaps of Luvian origin and speaking the as yet
undeciphered Linear A language. The Bulgarian linguist, Vladimer
Georgiev, claiming decipherment of the Phaestos Disc found on Crete in
1910, believes that that represented a Luvian language which was dominant
on the island around 1,700 B.C. and that the Eteocretans and Pelasgians had
similar languages. The Kydonians lived in western Crete, language
unknown, but they were definitely not Greek in origin. The Pelasgians were
an Aegean people who originally may have inhabited all of the Aegean,
Thrace and the Greek mainland. Their language was mid-way between

Thracian and Hittite-Luvian. Obviously Minoa was a multi-lingual
civilization.

The first palaces and cities of Crete appeared about 2,000 B.C., including
Knossus, Phaistos, Mallia and Zakros. The first had about 80,000

people| footnote] and the vast palace for the king called "Minos", which was
located there, was the largest and most elaborate of all. It had exquisite
potteries and tiles, bath rooms with running water, toilets with drainage
systems and evidences of rich appointments and jewelery. The construction
of such palaces and its accouterments required any number of specialized
craftsmen - architects, stone masons, carpenters, plasterers, painters,
potters, sculptors, gem-cutters, glass makers, faience makers, smiths,
weavers and probably others.

Cotterell (Ref. 41) says no less than 20,000 between the years 2,000 to
1,700 B.C.

The five hundred years following 2,000 B.C. saw the ships of the Minoans
roaming unchallenged on the Aegean Sea. The Cretan navy apparently
cleared the seas of pirates and protected the homeland from invasion so that
there was no necessity for any kind of fortification on the island. The
commercial fleet was involved in extensive commerce with surrounding
islands, the Near East and Egypt. The latter supplied scarab seals, carved
ivories, copper and tin[footnote] and Egyptian linen, while receiving olive
oil, painted pottery, timber and woolen cloth. The Cretans are said to have
had 100,000 sheep. An alabaster jar bearing the name of the Hyksos King
Khyan has been found and confirms probable delegations and trade with
Egypt. Perhaps from over-population, the Minoans sent colonists to various
other islands and the mainland of Greece. The island Thera was an
important Minoan satellite and a colony on the island of Kythera, between
the western end of Crete and the Peloponnese, was started before 2,000
B.C. and was still occupied at 1,450 B.C. Cretan fashions spread throughout
the islands and even to Greece and Asia Minor.

Cotterell (Ibid) reports that there was adequate copper available locally and
that tin was imported from Bulgaria and Romania

Recent excavations near Arkhanes, south of Knossos, have revealed a
temple for the dead, dating to 1,800 B.C. with a noble woman burial which

included such things as a gold signet ring with a cult scene confirming that

Minoans, like other peoples of that time, had the ancient belief in the dying
and resurrected god. There is evidence of animal sacrifice and apparently in
times of great stress, as in the earthquake period about to be described, they

188)

About 1,700 B.C. violent earthquakes demolished the old palaces, but they
were all rebuilt, for the most part on entirely new plans. During this
rebuilding, Minoan civilization acquired its definitive character and the
buildings developed their unique charm, elegance and grace. In the period
of the new palaces, the population of Crete has been estimated at 256,000
with 50,000 under the direct rule of Knossos. The palaces had great store
rooms and work shops and the earliest writing had to do with accounting for
wheat, oil, barley, olives, figs, livestock, wine and honey. Horses are not
documented on the island before the 15th century B.C. when the technique
of using heat to bend wood for spoked wheels became available. The
overall society was a stratified theocracy with the priest-king at Knossos
supreme and lesser priest-kings in the other palaces. The latter, in turn, were
surrounded by their nobles and their women and beneath them was the
peasantry, still living essentially in a Stone Age economy. In contrast to
most other ancient civilizations there were no slaves. Among the upper
classes both sexes wore jewelry and participated in art, dancing, music and
when young and supple, in the famous bull acrobatics. The meaning of the
latter is still not clear.

A little north of Crete in the Aegean Sea is the peculiarly shaped island
variously known as Thera or Sartorini. This is the remnant of a great
volcano which had its first traceable eruption about 1,500 B.C. burying the
island in ash and pumice. In 1967 Professor Marinatos discovered the
tephra-preserved (covered with volcanic dust) town of Akrotiri on that
island. In effect this Cretan extension was a Bronze Age "Pompeii"
complete with terra cotta plumbing and town-house architecture. For fifty
years or so after that first eruption Thera remained quiet, but we shall hear
more of it in the next chapter. (Ref. 109) Additional Notes

GREECE

If one accepts the theory that the Kurgans of south Russia migrated to
Greece to become the Mycenaeans, the date of 2,300 B.C. is probably
appropriate. Some believe there were two waves of these Kurgans, with the
second wave coming just before 1,600 B.C. These were a hard-riding
watrior class who dominated their earlier brothers to become a small,
powerful, rich, ruling class. The original inhabitants of both mainland
Greece and the adjacent Aegean islands were perhaps related to the Cretans
in speech and race, but the development of civilization on the mainland had
been arrested by massive invasions at the end of the 3rd millennium by
barbarous peoples from Anatolia, and a century or so later by invaders from
the north. The latter may have been the Kurgans, the first "Greeks",
although some authorities believe that the Greek-speakers arrived much
later. Like the Minoans, the Bronze Age Greeks[footnote] had passed
through centuries of humble living in small villages, obviously poor and
with limited trade, chiefly with Crete. Of the various tribes, the men of
Mycenaea soon dominated by virtue of chariot warfare and by 1,600 B.C.
there was an advanced style of life, centered in that community, but with
influences extending to Crete and influenced by Crete, with ships of both
vying for control of the Mediterranean. Pei (Ref. 168) says that the classical
Greek language was well differentiated by that time. The sail had been used
after about 2,000 and this had allowed for better fishing and increased
maritime trade. With domestication of the grape and olive, new industries
appeared and thrived. Magnificent tombs, with masses of gold art objects
are dated to the 16th century B.C. (Ref. 215, 8, 168, 41)

The terms "Mycenaeans" and "Achaeans" both simply mean "Bronze Age
Greeks"

UPPER BALKANS

Excavations at Malig, Albania, have proved that people lived there in 2,800
B.C., perhaps before the arrival of the Indo-Europeans, and they may have
maintained some relations with Mycenaea. In the third millennium B.C. and
for awhile after 2,000 B.C. most of the Balkans was occupied by the
Tumulus, Battle Axe and Corded Ware peoples (Please see B. CENTRAL

EUROPE, this chapter) who may have descended from the copper and
goldsmiths described in the previous chapter. In the early second
millennium, however, the area was crisscrossed with migrating tribes,
particularly the Greek peoples, described immediately above. The Illyrians,
settling in Yugoslavia, were an Indo-European group related to the pre-Celts
who were located just to the northwest in the present areas of Hungary and
Austria. With the development of agriculture in the sandy, glacial soil of
northern Europe at the end of this time-frame, the Balkans became
something of a backwater. (Ref. 8, 178)

ITALY

The basic people of ancient Italy were the Western Iberians of the original
Mediterranean race, and they were essentially the sole inhabitants of all
Italy, Sicily, Sardinia and Corsica except for some coastal settlements by the
eastern Mediterranean people, until about 2,000 B.C. when invaders
descended from the north. The latter were the Italics, part of the western
branch of early Indo-European speakers, related to the "Ligurian Celts".
They built homes on foundations of piles (Terramara) and their descendants
became the basic stock of present day Italy. By 1,850 B.C. these people had
occupied all of Italy except the northwestern one-quarter which was
occupied by Etruscans, who McEvedy (Ref. 136) insists, were remnants of
the Western Iberians. Ancient peoples also remained on Sicily and the
western islands, although by 1,600 B.C. so-called "Celto Ligurians" from
southern France had occupied Corsica and Sardinia. (Ref. 136)

CENTRAL EUROPE

By 3,000 B.C. all Europe but northern Scandinavia had farming
communities. Indo-European speaking groups lived throughout central
Europe from the beginning of this period’s various modifications of the
basic language. Professor Jan Filip (Ref. 194), patriarch of Celtic history of
Charles University, Prague, described a "Corded Ware" or "Battle Axe"
people representing the first Indo-European speakers of this area, living
there about 2,300 B.C. as the precursors of the Celts, and dominating the

earlier Neolithic Cultures of northern central and western Europe. The
Austrian Salzkammergut was settled about 2,500 B.C. with the inhabitants
getting salt from salt wells. (Ref. 91) As a general westward migration
occurred the area became dominated about 1,850 B.C. by the Bell-beaker
Culture, named from the bell shaped cups found in their graves. The origin
of this pottery society has been much disputed, some claiming it started in
Spain and spread east to Germany, and some the reverse, but if it was,
indeed, a culture endemic with the early Indo-Europeans, then the
expansion must have been westward from the original Indo-European zone.
The Aunjetitz Culture, a variation of the Bell-beaker, flowered in
southwestern Germany and Austria from the 18th to the 16th centuries B.C.
Excavations in the latter country have revealed bronze needles, arm spirals,
daggers and ceramics with intricate detail. As agriculture spread, sometimes
as seeds were moved to new climes they would scarcely grow and weeds
would take over the fields. On some of these occasions, however, it was
discovered that the weeds themselves could be used and cultivated instead.
In this manner rye and oats developed in northern Europe. (Ref. 45, 136,
194, 211, 91)

WESTERN EUROPE

There was a late Copper Age in Spain with techniques coming across
southern Europe from the Caucasus, after 3,000 B.C. A source of tin was
found in northwest Spain so that the area could readily participate in the
bronze industries between 2,500 and 1,500 B.C. Some of the metal-using
communities, such as those in southern Spain and Portugal about 2,500 had
to be fortified and some had two high walls with outlying fortresses to give
warning of attack. Defenders fought with bow and arrows. (Ref. 175)

In the last chapter we discussed the 4th millennium inhabitants of England,
the Windmill Hill people. It was probably these who, at the beginning of the
3rd millennium, started to build a series of remarkable stone monuments in
southern England. The best known and most thoroughly investigated,
written about, photographed, painted and romanticized of these, is
Stonehenge. The original structure, Stonehenge 1, dates to not later than
2,900 when there were already some 180 separate habitation centers in
Wessex. At Stonehenge, first of all there was dug a circular ditch some

1,050 feet in circumference, 4 1/2 to 6 feet deep and 12 feet wide. The
purpose of this was to supply the chalk soil for a bank which was thus built
up along the inner side of the ditch. It has been estimated that this alone
required about 28,000 man-hours of work, using red-deer antlers for picks
and whatever for shovels. The bank measures 320 feet in diameter and was
at least 6 feet high, although some say 20 feet, with a causeway entrance on
the northeast. Only a few stones were used in Stage I, a couple at the
causeway entrance and perhaps the four Station Stones, but a mysterious
feature was a group of 53 post holes also in the causeway entrance.

Most modern scholars are convinced that these were used for precise and
constant observation of the extreme northerly risings of the moon for a
hundred years or more. It requires nineteen years for the moon to exactly
repeat its course in relation to the earth and sun, so that predictions of moon
positions, possible eclipses, etc. require long periods of observation. The
average diameter of the post holes is 3 feet 6 inches, with a depth of 2 1/2
feet.

There is no evidence that they ever held stones or wooden posts. Some have
yielded cremation remains, flakes of flint, cups, etc. all adding to the
mystery. Professor Fred Hoyle (Ref. 99) believes that this was not built by
local people, but by some who came especially to place the circle at the
exact spot needed for some astronomical reasons.

After Phase I of Stonehenge was completed (but before Phase IT) another
enormous, strange construction appeared about one-half mile north of
Stonehenge. This is a narrow horse-shoe shaped earthworks with each leg
running for one and three-quarters miles, and which is called the "Cursus",
because some have felt it represents a Neolithic race-track. There is some
evidence that the bluestones which we shall see were used in Stonehenge II
had earlier either been used for some purpose or stock-piled at the western
end of this Cursus. There are about twenty similar constructions in Britain
and this one is the second longest and it may even pre-date Stonehenge I.
The longest Cursus is at Dorset and measures 6.2 miles in length. (Ref. 7)
There are none of these constructions outside Britain.

Before the next phase of Stonehenge was constructed, the Bell-beaker
people arrived from the continent (2,500-2,300 B.C.) with their copper

working skills and their arrow-heads and daggers. Tin was discovered in
Cornwall and a bronze industry could soon develop. It was these same
Beaker folks who subsequently bridged the transition in Ireland from the
Neolithic period to the Bronze Age between 2,000 and 600 B.C.,
introducing copper and gold ornamentation. These people also migrated
into Scotland to fuse with the earlier flint users who had come from Ireland
and Norway at about 3,000 B.C. McEvedy (Ref. 136) calls the Bell-beaker
people of the continent "Celto-Ligurians" and although we dislike getting
involved in semantics, we feel that they were definitely not Ligurians and
probably not rightly called Celts, as the latter were not yet definitely
separated from the general mass of Indo-European speaking peoples of
central Europe.

But to return to Stonehenge, Phase II dates to about 2,100 B.C., with the
placement of a double Bluestone Circle, with stones six feet apart in the
center of the original construction. Part of this, however, was never
completed. The amazing thing is that 82 of these ophitic dolorite stones
were somehow brought from their only source, the Prescelly Mountains of
Dyfed, Wales, - some 135 miles "as the crow flies" or 240 miles by sea and
land, each weighing several tons, to Stonehenge. Professor Gerald
Hawkins| footnote] has calculated that 209,280 man-days were required to
move these stones. In addition to the Blue Stone Circles an "Altar Stone"
was added, the entrance was widened and a new axis alignment made or
astronomical sightings. This Phase II may have been influenced by the
Beaker people.

As noted in Balfour (Ref. 7, page 90)

The most spectacular part of the Stonehenge display, however, is Phase III,
which consists of the Sarsen Circle of thirty uprights and lintels, some
weighing up to 45 tons. These massive stones came from near Avebury and
almost of necessity had to be moved on ice about the year 2,000 B.C. when
England was much colder than before or since.

Professor Alexander Thom, astronomer and mathematician, although
differing from Hoyle as to many details, is equally sure that these ancient
stone builders were able to predict eclipses, and after many years of study
believes that all the menhirs (long stones) and cromlechs (curved stones) of

Britain and Brittany as well, are similar in purpose. There are of course
other stone circles, some 900 all together, to be found throughout the British
Isles. One, known as Durrington Walls, is two miles north of Amesbury and
was built by skilled carpenters of about 2,500 B.C. probably with a sloping,
cone-shaped roof and a central courtyard open to the sky. It is 1,720 feet in
diameter. Areton(?) warriors undoubtedly inhabited these regions after
about 1,900 B.C. forming a ruling power aristocracy which lasted some 600
years. The mysterious stone ring of Brogar on one of the Orkney Islands as
well as the great tomb at Maeshowe date to 2,300 B.C., the same time as the
construction of the Egyptian pyramids. Later, at about 1,600 B.C., there was
a time of high sea levels, and the coastal forests of Britain were inundated
by the sea. (Ref. 176, 178, 224, 7)

The largest man-made mound of antiquity, rising to a height of 130 feet and
spreading at its base well over 5 1/2 acres, representing an amazing
surveying and engineering feat of Stone Age man, has recently been
excavated at Silbury Hall, not far from Avebury, in Wiltshire, England.
Multiple tunnels into this giant mound have failed to reveal any skeletons
and its purpose remains unknown.

Recent figures show 4,350 dolmens (usually tombs), 2,070 menhirs, 30
cromlechs and 110 alignments in France. The most impressive of all may be
the 3,000 units made up of 10 to 30 columns of menhirs stretched over two
miles of countryside at Carnac, France. There may have been a select class
of priests trained in studying the heavens, and these may have originated in
England, with a later passing on of the secrets to the priests of the Celts, the
Druids. Caesar wrote that the priestly discipline of the Celts was developed
in Britain and was carried from there to Gaul, and by oral, not written,
tradition. Professor Thom's studies indicate that all these stone monuments
were built on multiples of a standard unit of measurement called the
megalithic yard and which is the equivalent of 2.72 feet. Although men had
worked on these monuments for 2,000 years, after about 1,500 B.C. no
more were built. Professor Hoyle believes that later generations of
astronomer-priests lost the ability to keep the astronomical systems up to
date, began to make errors and then lost their followings. (Ref. 99, 215,
176, 7)

SCANDINAVIA

About 3,000 B.C. a few immigrants to Denmark brought agriculture and
big, polished flint-stone axes to use as tools to clear the forest. These axes
have been found by the tens of thousands. Dolmens of stone, such as we
mentioned under WESTERN EUROPE, have been found in the range of
three to four thousand and are more numerous in Denmark than anyplace in
the world. Megalithic tombs were constructed and many dead were laid to
rest in each, some of the dead wearing hundreds of amber beads.

Beginning about 2,500 B.C. there were people of at least four different
cultures living side by side in south Scandinavia. They were:

1. The declining remains of the megalithic civilization.

2. The Single-grave Culture of Jutland, which was related to the next.
3. Boat-axe Culture of south Sweden.

4. Pitted Ware or Pit-comb Ware Culture, to be discussed below.

After 2,000 B.C. these various populations fused together in a Neolithic
Culture which made beautiful daggers and other instruments of flint. By
1,500 metal work had appeared in a unique Northern Bronze Age.

After about 2,000 B.C. the amber beads no longer appeared in tombs, as the
amber had begun to be traded to the Mediterranean civilizations. Stone
cutting and flint quarries were early Danish industries. The Battle-axe
people, later to be called "Teutons", appeared about 2,000 B.C., but they
used no bronze for another thousand years. Farming communities were
present all through southern Scandinavia throughout the third millennium
B.C. and it was these Stone Age men who left the huge grave chambers.
Finland and the far north were sparsely populated with the Pit-comb Ware
Culture, characterized by ferocious looking, rod-like arrowheads. (Ref. 215,
117, 88)

EASTERN EUROPE

The Baltic area and western Russia were colonized chiefly by Indo-
Europeans after 3,000 B.C. An exception was the nomadic ancestors of the

Estonians who reached the Baltic from the valleys of the upper Volga. They
were related to Finns and Hungarians, with a language which was not Indo-
European. In the third millennium the Pit Grave Culture of the Ukranian
steppes showed wheeled carts and domesticated horses. This may represent
the site of the proto-Indo-Europeans, although as mentioned above, the
argument goes on. Soviet and German philologists believe that the origin of
these people and their language had to be near the mouth of the Volga at the
north end of the Caspian Sea, with spread from there both westward into
Europe proper and southward and easterly into Iran and then India. They
refer to the people as "Ur-people" and the language as "Ur language". This
concept has been seconded by the United States archeologist of Balt
descent, Marija Gimbutas, after her study of the kurgans (burial mounds) of
southern Russia. The Kurgan people seem to have left their homes between
2,400 and 2,300 B.C. to first invade the north shore of the Black Sea and
then the territory of the Trans-Caucasus. The mountain people of the latter
area had already had much contact with the Mesopotamian civilizations and
had a civilizing influence on the barbarian Kurgans. The Hittites may have
moved out from this culture in about 2,000 B.C. (Ref. 91) Old river names
suggest that by 1,500 B.C. the entire region between the Baltic and the
Alps, the British Isles and Hungary, was occupied by people speaking a
single Indo-European idiom called "Old European Language" by the Indo-
Europeanist, Hans Krahe[footnote]. A special section at the end of this
chapter will give a more or less complete break down of the various Indo-
European languages. In the meantime let us return to our narrative about
eastern Europe in this particular time-frame.

"Volga" is a Baltic word meaning "long"

The Ukraine and some areas farther east were soon colonized by pastoral
groups, some of which were the ancestors of later-day Scythians. North of
the steppe and desert belt in Russia, around fifty-five degrees north, there
was a thin belt of deciduous forest with some farmers, and still north of that
were scattered hunters of the reindeer. Copper working extended almost to
the Arctic by 1,850 B.C. Peasant farmers from central Europe continued to
push eastward along the forest belt of central Russia, growing the hardy
cereals as crops and reaching Moscow and the southern Urals by 2,000 B.C.
(Ref. 8, 225, 45, 88)

The Baltic linguistic group of northeastern Indo-Europeans came to the
eastern Baltic and western Russia area before and about 2,000 B.C. as
agriculturalists and cattle raisers. They originally reached northward to
Finland and eastward to the upper Volga[footnote], but only the
southeastern Baltic groups survived through the Bronze Age, the Iron Age
and down to about A.D. 500, living between the Oder and Dvina rivers.
There are hundreds of Baltic loan words in the Finno-Ugrian languages.
The Galindians (Golyad of Russian chronicles) were the easternmost Ballts,
extending up to the Moscow area and existing up until the 12th century of
the Christian Era. Some islands of these people still existed around
Smolensk, Vitebsk and Minsk, almost up until the present time. The only
true survivors today, however, are some families in Latvia and Lithuania,
probably mixed with invading Germans, Poles and Russians through the
centuries. They at least still have Baltic languages. (Ref. 8, 61)

As noted by Herm (Ref. 91), page 71

Even after 2,000 B.C. the Fatyanovo Culture existed in central Russia. By
1,800 three rather distinct peoples occupied their own zones in eastern
Europe. In addition to the Balts, which we have described as occupying the
Baltic area, to the south was a band of Slavs extending from far in Russia
west to the Vistula, and finally the entire southern area west and just north
of the Black Sea was occupied by the Thraco-Cimmerians. At 1,600 B.C.
the Balts and Slavs were still without the use of bronze, although it was in
common use to the west with the proto-Celts and to the south among the
Thraco-Cimmerians. (Ref. 136)

Forward to Europe 1500 to 1000 B.C.

Note:As the Bronze Age set in about 2300 B.C. Cyprus came into its own
because of its geologic gift of copper. The Troodos Mountains of this
island were once oceanic crust, thrust up some 70 million years ago by the
advancing African and Arabian tectonic plates and they are loaded with
copper and other metals. At first the ancients could simply pick copper
nuggets off the ground. (Ref. 281)

Europe: 1500 to 1000 B.C.

SOUTHERN EUROPE

Back to Europe 3000 to 1500 B.C.

EASTERN MEDITERRANEAN ISLANDS

The Cretan civilization ended within the first fifty years of this time period
but the exact nature and cause of the destruction is not known. Syridon
Marinatos, late Inspector General of Antiguities of Greece, believed that
Crete was destroyed by a tremendous volcanic action in Thera, the island
known anciently as Kalliste and later also as Sartorini. This last eruption of
the Thera volcano was followed by massive tidal waves as the island center
collapsed, and these waves surged outward perhaps 650 feet high at
probably two hundred miles an hour, dealing the settlements of Crete a
pulverizing blow. The ash was carried as far as 1600 miles, killing
vegetation and choking harbors. The force of this volcanic explosion has
been equated with that of 500 to 1,000 atomic bombs. The ash fallout
plunged the Aegean Sea area into night for weeks. Total deposits of the ash
on the remnant of Thera are still two hundred feet deep and the same ash
has been found recently to be a layer seven feet thick some 9,850 feet deep
on the floor of the Mediterranean Sea, 87 miles from the volcano.
Scandinavian scholars date this tremendous upheaval of the Mediterranean
world as late as 1,200 B.C. and feel that the Sea People who roamed the
Mediterranean, raiding the coasts of Asia Minor and Egypt were displaced
peoples from island and other coastal civilizations destroyed in this great
cataclysm. The period is likened by Heyerdahl (Ref. 95) to what he has
described as a similar great unknown tumult of just before 3,000 B.C. There
is no doubt but that the blast completely changed the Mediterranean,
whether it completely destroyed Crete or weakened it for subsequent
invasion by Mycenaeans, or whatnot. The Thera explosion was four times
greater than the A.D.1,883 Java eruption that took 36,000 lives and spread a
cloud of ash around the earth’ (Ref. 129, 176, 109)

Arguments still go on about the actual dating of the great Thera incident,
some recent revisions of radio-carbon datings indicating that it occurred
about 1,600 B.C. and thus could not have had direct bearing on the Cretan
demise. Regardless, there is no doubt that even before its final end, Crete
had been subjected to devastating attacks in its island territories by the
Phoenicians, new masters of the Mediterranean, and to attacks at home by
the Mycenaean, "barbarian" Greeks. The latter, perhaps simply following
their own warlike instincts for plunder, definitely came ashore on Crete, at
least later, and left their marks, destroying whatever remained of all the
palaces except Knossos, which they used for their own capital. The
Mycenaean rulers wrote their language in Linear B which has now been at
least partially deciphered and appears to be a form of ancient Greek. By
1,375 B.C. even Knossos was burned to the ground and whether this was
done by rebelling, remnant Minoans or squabbling Mycenaeans chief s, no
one knows. A disastrous expedition to Sicily had been undertaken at about
that time, and its failure may have led to the fall of the Knossos lords. Still
another view, however, is that Knossos remained functional until 1, 150
B.C. when it fell to invading Dorian Greeks. (Ref. 188) The last vestiges of
the Cretan or Minoan civilization in their colonies along the coast of Asia
Minor were also destroyed at a still later period by Ionian Greeks who then
made their own settlements there. Remnants or refugees from the Cretan
society are said to have fled to the Palestine coast, where they became
known as Philistines| footnote].

Mc Evedy (Ref. 136) says that some refugee Achaeans may have been with
the Cretans as they "transformed" into Philistines, as there are close
parallels between Philistine and Mycenaean pottery.

The Thera volcano was not the only cataclysmic occurrence of this period.
There were earthquakes all over the Mediterranean and even northern
Europe while volcanoes erupted in Italy and the Sinai and seismic tidal
waves "caused the sea to recede from the land and even sucked out the
rivers"[footnote]. After 1,100 B.C. the Dorian Greeks, who had charged
down the Greek peninsula, crossed over to Crete to repopulate it and
become the ancestors of its present population. (Ref. 127) Rhodes was also
colonized by Dorians from Argos in the 11th century B.C. (Ref. 38)

Herm (Ref. 91), page 87

GREECE

Mycenaean power was dominant in the Mediterranean at least after 1,400
B.C.[footnote] and their pottery was popular from Italy to the Turkish coast.
They used many slaves, especially women who were used in the textile and
bronze industries, as well as in private households. Some were captured in
war, many were bought. Houses had flushing lavatories and bath rooms
supplied with terra cotta pipes and sloping gutters. (Ref. 213) In the 14th
century B.C. a giant mound covering a stone tomb was constructed at
Mycenae which was 48 feet in diameter, 43 feet high to the tip of the dome
and had a doorway topped with a lintel made of a 100 ton stone.

Grant (Ref. 75) writes that the Mycenaean civilization started at 1,700 B.C.

At about the 13th century B.C. at the height of their power and when the
Mycenaeans controlled the Aegean world, they suddenly began to fortify all
their cities and strengthen their defences, indicating a premonition of
disaster. Other Greek speaking tribes had begun to drift down into the
Greek peninsula by about 1,500 B.C. but it was not until about 1,300 that
they were sufficiently strong to begin to usurp the Mycenaean power, so
that by the end of that century the Mycenaean cities and fortresses were in
ruins, the art degenerated and the written language (Linear B) had been
forgotten. (Ref. 215, 176) 1,250 B.C. is usually given as the traditional date
of the Trojan War, with complete collapse of Mycenaea by 1,200, but
Cotterell (Ref. 41) gives the latter date as 1,150 B.C.

There were three main tribes of the new, invading Greeks, each with its own
variation of the Greek language - lonic, Aeolic and Doric. The Dorians,
descending from the upper Balkans about 1,200 B.C. are generally credited
with the actual destruction of the Mycenaean Kingdom. They took the best
lands with the less favored regions left to the other tribes. Attica became
Ionian, along with a group of cities across the Aegean in the central section
of the Asia Minor coast, and from these people came the master institution
of Greek civilization, that is, the polis. Physically the polis consisted of a
town or city with an area of farm and pasture land surrounding it. Politically
it was a community governed by magistrates and laws. All of the invading
warriors had ancestral ties with central Asia nomads and still lived a similar
life, eating sheep, goat and wild hog. Still another tribe, the Thessalians,

entered Greece in the province which now carries their name, sometime
before 1,000 B.C. (Ref. 215, 136, 211)

UPPER BALKANS

Thrace, in the area of present Bulgaria and a corner of present Greece along
with European Turkey, began a lively period with identifiable rulers and
Indo-European gods, at about 1,500 B.C. This country had two coasts - one
on the Aegean and the other on a corner of the Black Sea - and thus was at
the cross-road of West and East. The Thracians were formidable horsemen
with a taste for battle, banditry and elegant gold objects. Their goldsmiths
were producing masterpieces in the 13th and 12th centuries B.C. One of the
largest gold finds of Europe's Bronze Age comes from Vulchitrun, Bulgaria
and dates to this period, with many resemblances to the art of Mycenaea.
They did not have a written language and knowledge of them has come
chiefly through their Greek neighbors and recent Bulgarian excavations.
This was the homeland of the Phrygeans, who began at this time to spread
to Asia Minor. (Ref. 171)

ITALY

As noted in the last chapter, before 1,200 B.C. Italy was inhabited by a
thinly scattered, backward population of dark whites of the Iberian or
Mediterranean race. Then migrating Aryan Italics moved down, certainly
by the end of this period, at 1,000 B.C., settled most of northern and eastern
Italy, intermarried with the natives and established the Italian groups of
Aryan languages. This included the Latin tribe south and east of the Tiber,
and the Umbrians and the Sabines. These latter, living near Villanova, may
have been the first Europeans to learn the use of iron. Extreme northern
Italy, as well as the Mediterranean coasts of France and part of Spain, was
originally peopled by a non-European speaking group called Ligurians.
They were apparently pushed north by the Italics, where they came in
contact with early Celts so that about 1,200 B.C. this Ligurian culture was
absorbed into the Celto-ltalic (Apennine D) and the people gave up their

own language to take on the Celtic-P tongue. Subsequently they were
referred to by some European historians as Celto-Ligurians. They soon
adopted the cremation rituals of the Urnfield Culture. The Italics at the toe
of Italy pushed the Sicles toward Sicily, which was inhabited at the time by
the Sican tribe, of unknown origin and language. In Etruria, of central Italy
between the Tiber and the Arno, there was a Bronze Age Culture called
Apennine and there was an abundance of copper and some tin for the
making of bronze. Copper from the island of Elba was used throughout the
2nd millennium B.C. South Italy began to receive contacts from Mycenaean
Greece as early as 1,300 B.C., particularly on the island of Pithecusae on
the west, and Vivara and Lipara, and by the 13th century B.C. Mycenaean
imports were already common. (Ref. 136, 75)

For hundreds of years the peaceful farmers of Corsica had buried their dead
in great stone chambers with nearby single, standing menhirs which were
roughly-shaped, unadorned, raised stones, and some seven feet high. After
1,500 B.C. there was a dramatic change and these menhirs became distinct
sculptures with carved heads, tunics, daggers and swords. Whether they
represented war trophies or memorials to a courageous enemy is still
debatable. At about this same time, or at least between the 14th and the 12th
centuries B.C., a tribe of the Sea People, the Shardana, came by way of
Libya across the Mediterranean and overran the southern part of Corsica,
pushing the remnants of the original Corsicans north, and by 1,000 B.C. the
latter had disappeared. The conquering Shardana burned their dead and did
not put up monuments. (Ref. 176)

CENTRAL EUROPE

In this time-frame an Indo-European speaking, tall, blonde people emerged
as a confederation of tribes from a prehistoric complex and began to inhabit
the bulk of Europe, spreading out from a "nest" around the rich ore fields of
Bohemia and the central German mountains. Called Unetice, the
distinguishing feature of this Bohemian-central German culture up until
about 1,500 B.C. was the burial mound, but by 1,300 they had given this up
in favor of cremation with the ashes of the dead placed in urns in
cemeteries, and thus becoming known as the Urnfield Culture. This became
the custom of later peoples, including the Italics, Venetians and Illyrians.,

and it may also have been the cradle of the three linguistic variations of
"Old Indo-European" and possibly also that of the Phrygians and
Armenians who settled in Anatolia about 1,200 B.C. All of these people
were farmers, not much inclined to village life, raising animals, hunting,
sacrificing to sun-gods, using the battle axe and both two and four wheeled
chariots. People later to be identified as true Celts had probably not become
differentiated at this time, although there is much confusion in the literature
on this point, and many would call the early waves of Indo-Europeans of
the Urnfield Culture by this name. (Ref. 91)

It is probable that after 1,220 B.C. the Scandinavian branches of the old
Indo-European peoples which had migrated south after the catastrophes
which seem to have occurred there in the 15th century (See
SCANDINAVIA, this chapter), reached central Europe and spread with the
local people in various directions - some to the Apennine peninsula to be-
come the Ambrones, later Umbrians - some drove the Veneti to northern
Italy and the forefathers of the Illyrians to Yugoslavia, and the Phrygians
and Armenians to Anatolia — and finally some went to Greece. In the far
north of the continent proper, the Thuringians Germanized north Germany
and the Goths, Burgundians, Alemans and Marcomans prepared to move
west as the Lausitz Slavs moved in behind them. (Ref. 194, 91)

WESTERN EUROPE

It was in the 12th century B.C. that Phoenicians from Sidon first settled on
the coast of Spain, building a light house at La Coruna to be used as a guide
for their ships going to England for tin. Soon after, other Phoenicians from
Tyre established trading posts along the Guadalquiver River and finally
founded Cadiz about 1,100 B.C. (Ref. 196) At this period Spain had a basic
population of dark whites who may have been the ancestors of present day
Basques, and there were Ligurians on the west coast. The latter had invaded
from France and were actually a mixture of early or pre-Celts with Celtic
speaking Ligurians who were numerous in France. McEvedy (Ref . 136)
insists that about 1,200 B.C. a branch of these same people crossed over
into England, conquering and intermarrying with the natives, who were
already a mixed group of dark-haired and dark skinned people, possibly
Iberian in origin, and light-haired Scandinavians. All of these people spread

throughout England and Wales. The area of Wessex was particularly
prosperous, with trading contacts with most of Europe and the
Mediterranean. Working on the assumption that some of these early
invaders of the British Isles were actually Celts, we can differentiate two
stocks:

1. The Goidels (Gaels) still surviving in northern Ireland and nigh
Scotland, representing a survival of the earliest Beaker-folk with a Q-
Celtic tongue

2. the Cymri and Brythons (Britons) still represented in Wales as the P-
Celtic, Urnfield people. The latter were close kin to the Gaulic Belgi

(Ref. 136, 196)

SCANDINAVIA

As the early Celtic people spread across northern Europe, they did not enter
Scandinavia, and actually even made a type of barrier cutting off some trade
between Scandinavia and the Mediterranean areas. In spite of this some
iron, which was the secret weapon of the Celts, seeped into Scandinavia, so
that they also had what might be called a "Celtic Iron Age", even though
their basic economy still depended mainly on imported bronze to the extent
that their unique metal work developed a special Northern Bronze Age.
People buried their dead in log coffins in barrows and the clothing and hair
were preserved intact. Rock scribings of wild animals and legendary scenes
hewn into rock continued to be produced throughout large areas of
Scandinavia, including Finland, and even parts of northern Russia. The
richest finds of these scribings straddles the Swedish-Norwegian border.
(Ret. 122; 228)

The climate in Scandinavia was for awhile warmer and drier than today and
then it became cold again. Glaciers expanded, the sea level sank and vines
stopped growing. In the more southern areas the Teutonic or Germanic
tribes were in growth and some had already migrated to Britain and back
and forth to the main continent. Danish amber was in demand on the
continent and by 1,000 B.C. the Danes decked themselves with ornate
weapons and ornaments and used bronze lurs as musical instruments.

Navigation science must have been fairly well established, as there was
much sailing of narrow, keel boats about England, Jutland and Brittany and
perhaps even to Gibralter and the Canary Islands, where boat drawings
similar to the Scandinavian ones have been found. (Ref. 117)

EASTERN EUROPE

The previously described Urnfield Culture, involving the burial of the ashes
of the dead in urns, appeared in Poland about 1,300 B.C. and was also
called the Lausitz Culture. These early people of Poland were the Lusatians,
a western branch of Slavs. The eastern Slavs by the Pripet marshes of the
middle Dnieper River did not use this burial method. North of both of these
Slavic groups the Balts and/or Letts lived on the south shore of the Baltic.
As indicated previously they may be neither purely Slavonic nor Teutonic
nor Celtic. Their classical Baltic Bronze Age Culture, located between the
Oder and Dvina, included local metal objects, pottery and burial rites in
barrows surrounded by stone rings. To the northeast of the Balts all land
area was sparsely inhabited by Finns and/or Lapps. The bulk of the southern
branch of the Baltic Finns was the Estonians. Others of this group were the
Livs (now about 1,000 remain on the tip of Courland) and the Votes. There
are perhaps a few of the latter still around Narva, but they originally
occupied all of Ingria. All of these Finns, like the Balts, came originally
from the great arc of the Volga in the first half of the 2nd millennium B.C.
and probably met with the Aesti, described by Tacitus. As they reached
their Baltic homes, they intermarried with Balts and Lapps in an amount
unknown. Southern Russia, from the Carpathians to the Caspian Sea was
inhabited at that period by the Aryan Cimmerians, probably closely related
to the Thracians. The Cimmerian name is preserved in the Crimean
peninsula of the Black Sea. (Ref. 136, 61, 144)

Forward to Europe: 1000 to 700 B.C.

Europe: 1000 to 700 B.C.

EUROPE

Back to Europe 1500 to 1000 B.C.

SOUTHERN EUROPE

EASTERN MEDITERRANEAN ISLANDS

The great island empires of previous centuries no longer existed, and all of
these areas were integral parts of either Greece or Asian states. For
example, the southern half of Cyprus was now under Phoenician influence,
while the northern half, along with

Rhodes and Crete were under Greek control. At various periods around 800
B.C. Assyrians, Egyptians and Persians conquered Cyprus, but let native
kings rule. Dorian Greeks continued to control Crete, however. (Ref. 38)

GREECE

As the classical Greeks multiplied and migrated down the peninsula they
did not develop a civilization of their own but, as barbarians, they wrecked
one (Cretan and Mycenaean) and then built a new one out of the old. The
Mycenaean cities and culture were so destroyed that even the art of writing
was lost until about 800 B.C. when the Greeks adapted the Phoenician
alphabet to their language. (Ref. 28) "Alpha", "beta", "gamma" are not
Greek words, but come from Semitic terms for ox, house and camel.

The development of iron working techniques also contributed to cultural
change and a well proportioned "geometric" pottery appeared about 900
B.C. This later turned up in Etruria in Italy, perhaps as copies. Early Greece
was not fertile enough to support a fast- growing population and the need

for more land, coupled with political oppression by the ruling classes led to
two hundred years of extensive colonial expansion involving all the shores
of the Mediterranean as well as the Aegean islands, Sicily, and Thrace. The
colonies soon became independent of the mother cities, which continued to
fight among themselves. Thucydides dates the earliest sea battle of history
to about 712 B.C. between Corinthians and Corcyraeans. Corinth was
formed from the union of a group of villages early in the 8th century B.C.
and soon was wealthy because it was on the key land route between all the
Hellenes (so-named from the mythical King Hellen, progenitor of all Greek
peoples).

The Greeks added vowels to the Phoenician alphabet, and soon their
language and their love of beauty fused into the Greek genius which
transformed the world of that time.

NOTE: Insert Map Reference 97: Greek and Pheonician Colonies

The first Olympiad was held in 776 B.C. (Ref. 45, 216, 68, 75)

The fertile, wooded island of Euboea, just off the Greek coast became a
great maritime power about the 9th century B.C. establishing a trading post
at Al Mina on the coast of Syria which subsequently became a great source
of gold and silver. Similarly, in the 8th century B.C. they established a
trading post on the island of Pithecusae off the west coast of Italy for
development of trade with the Etruscan city-states. (R-75)

UPPER BALKANS

The upper Balkan area seethed with Dacians, Thracians and Greeks and at
this time a horde of ferocious, bearded, barbarian giants, the Scythians,
appeared around the Black Sea, displacing the Cimmerians from around the
north shore and the Crimea.

At the same time, the Greeks were bringing civilization back into the area
of Thrace with various colonies along the Aegean coast. Iron working was
well established along the Thracian and Illyrian areas. Colin Renfrew (Ref.

179) believes that the Thracian gold- smiths, working in Bulgaria, were the
descendants of the Copper Age mound-makers described in earlier chapters.

ITALY

The Terramare peoples had already spread through eastern Italy and part of
Sicily by the era under discussion and probably became the Samnite, Sabine
and Latin tribes, as mentioned in the last chapter. In Etruria, between the
Arno and the Tiber, in the 1 Oth and 9th centuries, B.C. there were groups of
Iron Age villages and by the next century special bronzes began to be
imported from Sardinia. Between 750 and 700 B.C. various hill top villages
in this Etruscan area began to be consolidated into city-states, with true
urbanization. The first was Tarquinii, some miles north of the Tiber mouth
on the west coast; then Caere to the south, reaching the Tiber; then Vulci to
the north of Tarquinii; and finally Clusium and Veii, as inland city-states.
All were fundamentally Etruscan people, speaking a non-Indo-European
language which was known later to educated Romans, but which remains
essentially untranslated today. The first three city-states mentioned above
became independently strong sea powers, with large trade potentials based
on enormous copper, iron and tin mines in the mountains of their respective
regions. They traded these much wanted metals for gold, first through the
Phoenicians from Sidon and Tyre, then after 800 B.C. with Carthaginians
who established commercial outposts in Italy, Sardinia and Sicily,(as well as
in France and Spain). In the 8th century it was the Greeks from the island of
Euboea who established their large trading centers on the island of
Pithecusae and on the mainland nearby at Cumae, to get the metals from the
various Etruscan city-states and the Etruscan held island of Elba. The
Euboean connections with Syria and Asia Minor also allowed the
distribution of Oriental objects in Etruria. Another product from the region
of Campigliese was alum, used particularly as a binder in the dyeing of
fabrics and shoe-leather, both of which were Etruscan specialties.

About 1,000 B.C. Villanovan migrants from the Danube, using iron, crossed
the Tiber and settled in Latium, exterminating or marrying the existing
population. There was undoubtedly a great deal of shifting of populations
and many of the Villanovans may have become assimilated into the

Etruscan city-states and certainly many Greeks became permanent residents
there, bringing much of their culture with them. The Etruscans of Tarquinii
spread southward across the Tiber to Capua as early as 800 B.C. probably
to facilitate trade with Cumae. It is a mistake to consider the Etruscans as a
single, homogenous group, as they lived in their separate city-states,
sometimes trading with each other, sometimes fighting and usually failing
in every attempt at any coordinated efforts. Grant (Ref. 75) says that they
were much like the modern Japanese in that they were great imitators and
they copied all Greek works of art, adding some of their own improvements
and unique variations.

There were settlements of some type at Rome probably through the 10th
and 9th centuries B.C., but the traditional date for the official settlement of
Rome is always given as 753 B.C. Just across the Tiber the Etruscan city-
state of Veii was formed by a coalition of villages between 750 and 700
B.C.. Ancient writers said that it had a population of 100,000 but this was
undoubtedly an exaggeration, although it probably was as large as Athens.
Veii had no metals, but became rich from agriculture and the salt beds at the
mouth of the Tiber. Rock-cut arched drainage channels and tunnels,
sometimes two miles long, were made to facilitate drainage and their roads
were excellent.

Based on Herodotus' reports from Lydian sources, the traditional concept
was that the Etruscans came from Lydia in Asia Minor, but almost all
modern authorities feel that this is completely in error. (Ref . 75). McEvedy
(Ref. 136) believes the Etruscans were natives of the old Iberian group and
that their higher culture developed from early contact with Greeks who
were interested in the Elban and Etrurian iron and copper deposits. This
view is strengthened by the Cambridge University Encyclopedia of
Archeology (Ref. 45) which says that the 10,000 known Etruscan
inscriptions belong to an old Mediterranean substratum still largely
undeciphered. Michael Grant (Ref . 75) gave further documentation of this
view in 1980. It is of interest that non-Indo-European languages were also
spoken by the Ligurians and Raetians of northern Italy, the Corsicans,
Sardinians and the Sicans of western Sicily. Tharros was a Phoenician port
on the west side of Sardinia which received gold from Spain and then
traded it extensively with the Etruscan cities for their own metal and

agricultural products. It was the wealthiest of all the Sardinian cities, with
multiple workshops for production of gold, silver, precious gem jewelry and
omaments. (Ref. 75) Bronze objects from these Sardinian workshops were
arriving at Etruscan harbors throughout the 9th and 8th centuries B.C. In
other parts of Italy, proper, there were the Iron Age groups of Picentes,
Veneti and lapyges. Some Etruscan city-states, particularly Volaterrae and
Clusium, also extended their trade and influence north into the Transalpine
regions. By 750 B.C., under this impulse, Felsina[footnote] had become an
economic power, as an amalgamation of villages with easy access to
Etruria.

"Felsina" was an Etruscan name, later called "Bononia" by Romans, after
the conquering Boii Gaulic tribe.It is now "Bologna".

CENTRAL EUROPE

About 1,000 B.C. various branches of the Urnfield Culture, a group of
related tribes with common culture and burial practices, dominated the
Rhine/Danube axis, and began to expand into valleys of the main river
thoroughfares. Four main branches gave rise to important groups of historic
peoples: Celts in the west along the upper Main, Moselle and the Rhone,
Slavs in the north from the Elbe to east of the Oder, Italic-speakers in the
region of Hungary and Illyrians in the southeast about the river Tisza and
Muresul. (Ref. 8) Some would say that the Celts did not really emerge as a
distinct people of common language, religion and culture until about the 8th
century B.C., and as manifested in the Hallstadt Culture (800-500 B.C.)
[footnote], located near the richest salt deposits in Europe and definitely
influenced by the Etruscans from the south. In 1846 some 1,100 graves
were opened in the Nieder as well as the Hallstadt regions of Austria,
showing the extensive iron utilization and decoration of this Celtic Age.
The Celts were energetic and inventive, using iron for tools and weapons.
"They introduced soap to the Greeks and Romans, invented chain armor,
were first to shoe horses and give shape to hand saws, chisels, files and
other tools we use today. They developed seamless iron rims for their
wheels, set our standard 4 feet 8 1/2 inch railroad gauge with the span of
their chariots, pioneered the iron plowshare, the rotary flour mill, a wheeled
harvester two millennia before Cyrus McCormick[footnote].

Herm (Ref. 91) dates the Hallstadt Culture from 700 to 450 B.C.
From Merle Severy (Ref. 194), page 588.

Farther north there was ever increasing pressure from the Germanic tribes
with some Teutons already moving up the Elbe and Rhine. The oldest
Germanic wind instruments date back to 800 B.C. In a triangular area in
northern Europe bounded by the rivers Aller and Saal in the west, a line
running east from the river Somme to the Taunus mountains to the head of
the Saal, and by the North Sea coast on the northwest, there were no Celts,
and before the Germanic tribes began their migrations from the east and
north, the people in this area spoke an older language than either Celtic or
German. Some place-names in this region still bear the stamp of this
unknown tongue, another example of ancient Europeans who did not speak
an Indo-European tongue. (Ref. 8, 91)

WESTERN EUROPE

In the early part of this period, the people of western Europe were in a
middle Bronze Age, speaking languages at present unknown. In Spain the
Phoenicians had reached the lower reaches of the Guadalquivir River in
Andalusia and they traded for metals mined by the natives, who seem to
have been mainly Basques. The largest Phoenician city was Tarshish (Greek
- Tartessos) and the script they used is called Tartessian, an only slightly
modified Phoenician. The ships of Tarshish were the largest sea-going
vessels known to the ancient world.

The first Indo-European speaking tribes who emigrated into France between
900 and 700 B.C. ran into the Ligurians who were short, muscular farmers,
dangerous in battle. They had already had contact with Greek traders and
Greek civilization. (Ref. 91) By the end of the 8th century B.C. Indo-
European peoples were pouring into all areas of western Europe and even
before that there was extensive trading occurring from the continent to
Britain, as evidenced by the imported tools, weapons and trinkets. It will be
recalled that the possibility of still earlier migrations of Celtic-speaking
people to the British Isles was mentioned in the last chapter. It is possible
that the Picts of Scotland were descended from the prehistoric Abernethy

Culture, people who may have migrated from Germany to Scotland about
1,000 B.C. Our very limited knowledge of their language suggests a
mixture of Celtic and some older speech. They were excellent metalsmiths
and had a symbolic art which survives on some stones. (Ref. 65,43,45).

SCANDINAVIA

Denmark continued in an extended Bronze Age with a non-egalitarian
society based on a mixed farming and herding economy. But the Danes
were also highly skilled metallurgists and carpenters and had contacts with
central Europe. The political leader was also the religious leader and there
was an elite class who controlled trade and religion. While in the early
Bronze Age, preceding the period under discussion, the dead were buried in
wooden coffins, in later times (1,100-500 B.C.) cremation was common and
the ashes were of ten placed in a pottery urn. Archaeologists have
uncovered about 350 hoards of bronze and occasional gold objects which
may have represented religious offerings of some kind. The objects
included tools, swords, neckrings, armbands, brooches, belt ornaments,
buckets, cups, bridle bits and shields, all of excellent workmanship, perhaps
constructed by very specialized craftsmen. Eighty-one of the hoards, dated
from the 9th to the 8th centuries, B.C., all contain women's ornaments in
what appear to be special sets. The presence of animal bones and harvesting
sickles in some hoards suggest that part of the purpose of the hoards was to
insure fertility of the crops and herds. (Ref. 257) The Danes also developed
their own Iron Age, using bog-iron. The people of Jutland of this period
were the Vandals about whom we shall hear much more in later chapters.

Southern Sweden also continued its Bronze Age culture at this time and
there was a general spread of Teutonic tribes throughout the area.

EASTERN EUROPE

Along the Baltic coast were German tribes and Balts. From the Elbe east to
beyond the Oder were the proto-Slav, Urmfield Culture Lusatians, destined

to become the Western group which had migrated from the east Carpathians
to the Dnieper area became the Eastern Slavs. Some 140 miles northwest of
Warsaw the Lusatian town of Biskupin has been excavated, showing an
extra-ordinary stone enclosed area of five acres with one hundred identical
houses arranged in thirteen rows, all made of oak and pine. a 130 yard-long
wooden causeway linked the city, which was originally on an island in a
lake, to the mainland. It is obvious that in addition to being skilled in the
use of wood these people had a high social development, and some feel that
their knowledge was carried over later to the Druids of the Celtic people.

By 800 B.C. the Eastern Slavs were completely conquered by the ferocious
Scythians who took over the area about the Black Sea. The Slavs of this
region were the ancestors of the Russian, Ukranian and White Russian
peoples, and they had an innate aptitude for work in metal. The Scythians
were primarily of Indo-European stock but may have had some added
Mongol elements. In addition to dominating the local Slavs, the Scythians
displaced the Cimmerians who had previously occupied the north shore of
the Black Sea about the Scythians because much that has been described
about them has come from Herodotus' The Persian Wars (Ref. 92) and one
must always take this tales "with a grain of salt". In Book IV he described a
visit to Scythia and wrote of their legends and customs. These included
various barbarous activities including their propensity for beheading an
enemy, then skinning him and making coats, caps and cushions from the
skin. The skulls may have been used for drinking cups, after gilding of the
interiors. The blood of the first victim was always drunk and scalps were
taken to be later used as napkins. Herodutus told of hard, cruel men with
leathery skin, filthy hair, wild cavernous eyes and many wives, all loving
strong wine and smoking hashish while living chiefly in the saddle. (Ref.
92, 176, 8) They must not have been completely savage, however, as
archeologists have shown that they produced highly developed arts and
crafts with gold necklaces, miniature, cast animal figures and delicate glass
ware. (Ref. 91) ***(*Page 1185) Additional Notes

Note:The Scythians came from the Altai mountain regions of Asia. (Ref.
279)

Forward to Europe: 700 to 601

Europe: 700 to 601 B.C.

EUROPE
Back to Europe 1000 to 700 B.C.

Beginning about 700 B.C. and lasting for the next 1,000 years most of
Europe seems to have been somewhat colder and moister than it is now.
(Ref. 215)

SOUTHERN EUROPE

EASTERN MEDITERRANEAN ISLANDS

Crete remained under Dorian Greek control, while the Aegean islands
overall belonged to a mixture of Ionian and Dorian tribes. Rhodes remained
independent and even had a colony on Gela, in Sicily. (Ref. 38)

GREECE

The Greek civilization continued to develop in Greece proper as well as on
the coasts of southern Italy and Asia Minor. There was a series of city-
states, most of which were aristocratic republics by the end of this century.
Cavalry played a decisive role in inter-state warfare and only the wealthy
could be cavalrymen, with the result that noble landowners developed an
increased influence. Sparta was supreme in the Peloponnese, while Athens
was the major power in Attica. The hillsides of Attica had already been
denuded of lumber for houses, ships and charcoal for metal working by 650
B.C. and the consequent erosion of the marginal land removed the soil to
the point where little would grow and the peasants began to go into debt.
All of Greece had poor land for livestock and thus with scarcity of animal
fats, the Greeks cultivated olives for their oil, and depended on food

imports for the remainder of their food necessities. The urgent need for
grain stimulated much of their later enterprises.

Metal coins were introduced stamped with the likeness of an ear of wheat.
Although gold, ivory and marble were used on sculpture and public
buildings, the common people lived in houses of sun-dried brick, built on
rubble in narrow streets strewn each day with litter thrown from the houses.
Wives were held to housekeeping and childbearing while husbands, if they
could afford it, openly took concubines and associated with the hetairae,
women of education, wit and beauty, groomed for this profession, not
unlike the Geisha of more modern Japan. There were about ten slaves for
every free citizen and it was felt that about one hundred slaves were
necessary to keep one philosopher in comfort. (Ref. 222, 211, 77)

UPPER BALKANS

The Greeks had cities on the Black Sea coast of present day Bulgaria and
Romania while Thrace began its period of highest culture. The
Macedonians were Greeks, speaking a dialect remotely connected to those
in Greece, proper, but developed separately. A series of local chieftains
ruled until the middle of this century when the country was partially united
by King Perdiccas I. (Ref. 180_)

ITALY

On the Italian peninsula there were multiple tribes, including the Latins and
the Sabines, but dominating most of the north and central parts were the
Etruscan city- states. Rome, itself, was ruled after 616 B.C. by Tarquinius
Priscus, son of a Corinthian Greek man and an Etruscan woman. The
Etruscans absorbed writing and other elements of the Hellenic civilization,
assimilated and changed them and passed them on to other Italic peoples.
The Latin alphabet was derived from the Etruscans, but the latter were
never able to inflict their language on the Romans and in essence Rome
remained a city of a dual culture. The Etruscans, themselves, had attained a
certain degree of unity of culture and language. They attempted to form an

Etruscan League, but the ties with adjacent tribes were more religious and
cultural than truly political and concerted action was difficult to obtain. The
Etruscans were superior engineers, and the Roman Theophrastus, writing
later in the third century B.C. stated that they cultivated medicine and were
rich in their pharmacopoeia. There is some evidence that they excavated
tunnels and leveled hills to drain swamps as malaria control projects. They
definitely practiced some surgery and dentistry, using gold wires in the

The Etruscans seemed to particularly like the painted pots and vases
brought from Corinth in Greece and were soon imitating them on a massive
scale. Near the end of this century, due to the acquisition of more metal
resources, perhaps at the expense of Tarquinii, the city-state of Caere
became enormously wealthy, covered about 375 acres and had a population
of about 25,000. Saleable copper and iron allowed them to acquire massive
quantities of gold from the Greek markets of Pithecusae and Cumae. There
is a strong possibility that the Etruscan alphabet, an adaptation of Greek
letters in use in the Greek markets, was introduced to Etruria by way of
Caere.

At about this same time the city-state of Vetulonia apparently became
another prominent Etruscan community, lying just northwest of Vulci and
characterized archeologically by great mound tombs, some of which
reached a height of nearly fifty feet. Large stone sculptures have been found
in these tombs, consisting of both male and female figurines and apparently
adaptations from Syrian originals. Bronze horse-buckles indicate much
horse traffic. Jewel works with a special granulation process of applying
tiny grains of gold were typical. Village amalgamation into a single city
perhaps occurred just at the end of the century. (Ref. 75)

There were Greek cities in Sicily and on the southern tip of Italy. In
particular, there was Sybaris, a city of renowned wealth, situated in the toe
of the Italian boot. Its inhabitants delighted in luxury and pleasures, features
which gave rise to the term "sybarite", still in our vocabulary. It has only
recently been located, now buried twenty feet deep in water soaked soil.
The Carthaginians had a trading post at Motya in western Sicily, just after
700 B.C.

CENTRAL EUROPE

This was an age of Celtic domination, but with gradually increasing
pressure from Germanic groups descending from the north. It was the late
Iron Age in Austria and people wore bracelets, anklets and decorations over
their chests. Intricate designs in iron with piece interlocking with closed
eyes, perfect animal figurines, etc. can be found in the collections from
multiple excavations of this era. Celtic ornamentation was greatly
influenced by Scythian modes and the latter also contributed a new concept
of cavalry, including snaffles, two-part bits and movable side reins. (Ref.
91)

WESTERN EUROPE

SPAIN AND PORTUGAL

The Iberians in most of this area were overrun by the Urnfield Celts except
in the south, where the Tarshish Culture persisted and resisted the Celtic
Hallstatt and later La Tene Iron Age Cultures. Contact with Phoenicians and
realization of the local mineral wealth, resulted in the development of the
only really native unit in this Kingdom of Tartessos. Greeks also came to
this area about 630 B.C., introducing olives[footnote] and grapes.
Investigations in Portugal and Spain in 1975 and 1976 revealed stone
writing in the Celtic Ogam, but using Libyan and Phoenician languages,
indicating a fusion of Gaels and native Iberians with Semitic and Libyan
sailors. Fell (Ref. 65) believes that it was from this area that mariners sailed
on across the Atlantic to America at this time, and regardless of one's
acceptance or non-acceptance of Fell's theories, there is definite
archaeological evidence that the sailors of Tarshish sailed up the Atlantic at
least as far as Brittany, to obtain Cornwall tin. Only limited excavation of
the Tartessian urban developments have been made to date. (Ref. 136, 88)
Trager (Ref. 222) credits the Phoenicians with bringing the olives to Spain

FRANCE, NETHERLANDS AND BELGIUM, AND BRITISH ISLES

This part of western Europe was now almost entirely Celtic. The Celtic
languages had two large divisions which the Welsh Sir John Rhys (1877)
called the Q-Celtic and P-Celtic, with the former using Q,K or Ch of ten
where the latter used P or B. The ancient representatives of the Q-Celtic
speakers were the Goidels (Gaels) and probably the Celts of Spain and
Portugal, with the modern descendants being the speakers of Irish and Scots
Gaelic and Manx. The ancient P-Celtic speakers were the Brythonic peoples
of Britain, the Gauls of central and eastern Europe and the Picts of
Scotland. Their descendants are the current Bretons of Brittainy, the
Cornish and the Welsh. Of interest is the fact that while the P-Celts wrote
using Greek or Latin letters, the Q-Celts originally wrote in a now defunct
script called "Ogam", which had an alphabet of fifteen letters, all
consonants and developed from a finger sign language. Later some tribes
added more consonants and vowel signs. (Ref. 65, 91)

SCANDINAVIA

While Norway, Sweden and Finland remained in a Bronze Age culture,
Denmark had both bronze and iron. This was a time of Germanic tribe
growth, particularly in the latter country. Ty, in northern Jutland, was the
alleged homeland of the Teuton tribe, while the Cimbrians are said to have
originated in Himmerland. There is still no complete agreement on the
relationship of the early Germanic and Celtic tribes. In ancient times they
were often confused, and apparently there was not a great deal of difference
physiologically. Language was supposedly the chief difference, but even
with that problems arose with such tribes as the Teutones and Ambrones
whose languages may have been mixtures with both Celtic and Germanic
elements. (Ref. 91)

EASTERN EUROPE

Southern Russia was dominated at this 7th century B.C. by the Scythians
who finally absorbed some culture from the rising Persian civilization on

one flank and the Greek cities of the western and northern shores of the
Black Sea, on the other flank. Some elaborate gold sculptures of that time
have been found in Scythian burial mounds. Northern Russia and the Baltic
area remained as described in the last chapter. (Ref. 176)

Forward to Europe 600 to 501 B.C.
Choose Different Region

1. Africa

2. America

3. Central and Northern Asia
4. The Far East

5. The Indian Subcontinent
6. The Near East

7. Pacific

Europe: 600 to 501 B.C.

EUROPE

Back to Europe 700 to 601 B.C.

SOUTHERN EUROPE

In this and the adjacent centuries there was extensive admixture not only of
cultures and materials but of peoples, themselves, throughout all areas of
southern Europe and even northern Africa and the eastern Mediterranean.
There were migrations of peoples from Greece to the Aegean islands and
Asia Minor and to Italy and southern France, while Phoenicians and
Carthaginians moved to Italy, Sicily and Sardinia and the various tribes in
both peninsulas intermingled, fought, traded, usurped territory and
consolidated villages. Peoples of varying races and languages seemed to
live side by side at times, only to fight at other times. Just as diverse
languages seem to be no impediment to students, business men, teachers
and travelers in Europe today, so it seems to have been true throughout the
centuries. Thus eastern and Greek influences became prominent in Italy and
the western Mediterranean. (Ref. 75)

EASTERN MEDITERRANEAN ISLANDS

There was no great political change in this century from the last except that
Persia took over Rhodes and its colonies. (Ref. 38)

GREECE

The node of Greek trading was at the Peloponnesian isthmus and Greece's
first major city, Corinth, had developed there. About 600 B.C. a paved way
allowed ships to be hauled across the isthmus. What Corinth owed to this
key position geographically, Athens owed to the discovery of silver at

nearby Laurion. It was with this that Athens subsequently financed its navy
using a slave work-force running to five figures. (Ref. 249) The Ionians
attained great naval strength, but Samos, under Polycrates, became a great
seapower also, using long-boats with as many as fifty oars. Greece
continued to be polyglot with even the Ionians having four different
dialects. (Ref. 122, 136, 216, 58)

As the city-states increased in population subsistence became a problem in
view of the poor soil, and various cities solved the potential crisis in various
ways. While Corinth and Chalcis established overseas colonies, Sparta
attacked and conquered nearby Greek neighbors and thus developed a
military state. Athens, on the other hand, developed a specialized
agricultural export trade and started manufacturing based on the export of
wine and oil from their grapes and olives, in exchange for grain. Miletus
and Eretria participated also in this trade. In Attica the tyrant[ footnote]
Peisistratus started a policy of granting state loans to farmers who planted
their land with grapes or olives. Solon forbade the export of any agricultural
product except olive oil and this was the final touch as far as Greek soil was
concerned, because the deep tap root of the olive tree soaked up the
moisture far down in the limestone and did nothing to feed top soil. Even
though Athens grew rich on the silver and olive oil, basic food supplies still
had to be imported, necessitating continued trade. The unique artistic talents
of the Athenians helped as they exported their famous "black-figure" vases
with the black shapes standing out from an orange-red base[footnote]. Meat
was a rarity except at times of religious sacrifice. There were no palms in
Greece, but figs were used, particularly dried, in winter.

"A tyrant was a man who gained power through coup d'etat and ruled extra-
legally." (Ref. 139) page 202

In 1970 a list showed that 1,560 of these vases had been found in Etruria,
Italy, and many more have been found since then. (Ref. 75)

A change in warfare technique early in this century was an important factor
in changing social relationships in Greece. The horsemen of the battlefield,
heretofore chiefly aristocrats because of the cost involved, were now being
replaced by heavily armed and armored clusters of infantrymen called
"hoplites" which were massed together, shields overlapping, in a "phalanx".
The farmers were able to take over this role and the tendency toward the

development of an aristocratic primacy was checked. Even then some social
struggles developed. Peisistratus (560-527 B.C.) backed the cause of the
poorer class of hill men against the aristocracy in one such uprising. It is
possible that the psychology of the phalanx helped to promote the
democratic ideal of all being equal, but contrary to what one might believe
from perusing the classical school textbooks, Greek democracy was far
from being total. Great numbers of slaves, which we shall discuss more in
detail later, lacked all political rights; women were also disfranchised; and
resident aliens were admitted to citizenship only very rarely. Actually,
throughout this 6th century Greece citizenry was pretty much a closed and
hereditary group united by ties of kinship.

NOTE: Insert Maps taken from Reference 97 ANCIENT GREECE,
CENTRAL GREECE

Aesop, of fable fame, lived in the first half of this century, born as a slave,
physically malformed, rough, dogmatic but brilliant. He became the Greek
ambassador to Lydia, but later, after challenging the integrity of the priests
of Apollo, he was sentenced to die and was thrown from a cliff. Thales,
after receiving part of his education in Egypt, founded the Ionian School of
Natural Philosophy and set up the first system of abstract geometry and is
said to have predicted the eclipse of the sun which occurred in 585 B.C.
Coins of small denomination were introduced in Greece at this time.
Toynbee (Ref. 220) says that 550 B.C. marks the end of the two hundred
years of the acme of the Hellenic civilization, but in view of the
developments in the latter part of this century and the next, many would
disagree.

UPPER BALKANS

Early in the century the Scythians extended their power as far west as
present day Hungary, but then they were decimated by a mysterious disease
and they drew back to their homeland around the Black Sea. Herodotus
mentions a disease of the Scythians which made them sterile, but it is not
known if this was one and the same scourge which facilitated their defeat
by Darius, when late in the century (513 B.C.) the Persians crossed the

Hellespont, conquered the silver and gold rich land of Thrace, making a
buffer zone against Greece. The remaining Scythians in the north fled,
burning the land behind them. Thrace had been flourishing with an
extensive trade and Greek styles and luxuries. Strangely enough, the
Persian invasion only seems to have stimulated Thracian art. Macedonia
continued its own more or less unmolested development. The Indo-
European Illyrians had settled in present day Albania and their mines had
attracted Greeks who settled near them on the Adriatic coast. (Ref. 92, 171,
28)

ITALY

The region between Florence and Rome, now known as Tuscany, was
populated by the prosperous Etruscans who capitalized on the rich copper
and iron deposits of the area. They had twelve cities in Tuscany, additional
settlements in the Po Valley and they controlled western Italy down to
Cumae. In the north after 600 B.C. Bononia began to produce a great series
of bronze buckets shaped like truncated cones and bearing figured reliefs.
These have been found as far away as Austria and Slovenia and the
Bononian ones may be copies of the latter. On the Adriatic Sea, in this
century, several villages were brought together to form the port of Spina,
not far from present day Venice. Spina was centered on a long, wide canal
which connected the sea to a lagoon. The city covered over 700 acres,
chiefly on peninsulae connected to the mainland only by narrow tongues of
land. It was peopled by Etruscans and Greeks as well as the more native
Venetii, and some of the latter apparently converted to the Etruscan
language.

All of the western Etruscan city-states had their individual merchant navies
which were active in the Tyrrhenian Sea, trading at the Greek and
Cathaginian ports and their trader-pirates were active even in the Aegean,
where they may have had a colony on the island of Lemnos. Many elements
in their art and religion have been interpreted as Near East in origin, and as
previously mentioned, traditionally it has been surmised that at least their
rulers were immigrants from Asia Minor, Lydia in particular, but this has
now been pretty well disproved. In 1964 there was excavated at Pergi, Italy,

a letter written on sheets of gold leaf, in Etruscan, supposedly from Hiram,
Lord of Tyre, to the king of Lavinia (near Rome) and Fell (Ref. 65)
interprets the language as belonging to the Anatolian group and related to
Hittite and Urartian. This does not, in itself, prove Near East ancestry for
the Etruscan people. (Ref. 68, 65)

Originally the people of Rome were ruled by Etruscan kings, who, in turn,
appointed or nominated the senate from the patrician families. Throughout
most of this century Rome was actually an Etruscan city, even though the
common language there was an Indo European one, destined to become
Latin. The draining of the marsh for erection of the Roman Forum by
construction of the impressive Cloaca Maxima was a typical Etruscan kind
of operation. Etruscan metal-work, pottery and armour appeared in Rome,
along with Etruscan immigrants. Terracotta friezes are identical in Rome
and Veii and the great sculptor, Vulca of Veii, made the statue of Jupiter for
a huge temple in Rome. The last of the Roman kings was an Etruscan and
when he was overthrown the republic was established. After 510 B.C. the
senators were appointed by two elected consuls. One of these, Valerius
Poplicola, promoted the Lex Valeria, sometimes called the "Habeas Corpus"
of Rome, allowing the plebians to appeal decisions of the magistrates to the
general assembly, thus freeing them from the worst class vindictiveness.
(Ref. 229, 75)

In the south, Pompeii was an important harbor for Nola and other Etruscan
towns in Campania and fragments of their black pottery have been found
there. Another Etruscan settlement was near Salerno. This Etruscan activity
in Campania did not last long, however, as Etruscan Capua and Greek
Cumae clashed violently about 525-524 B.C. when a force of Etruscans
invaded the area in what has been called the "long march". Aristodemus,
ruler of Cumae, repelled the invaders and later, with the help of adjacent
Latin tribes, he further defeated the Etruscans near Aricia, between 506 and
504 B.C. (Ref. 75) In a Greek colony in southern Italy, Pythagoras
established his brotherhood and incidentally developed his famous proof of
C2= A2+ B2 in a triangle. The group placed such emphasis on the theory of
numbers that ultimately it involved itself in a world of mystical,
mathematical abstractions.

Sardinia and the western half of Sicily were conquered and occupied by
Carthage in this century and of course there were multiple Greek colonies
all along southern Italian coastal areas as well as on the southern and
eastern coasts of Sicily. Somewhat replacing the Eubaean influence in the
Mediterranean, another Greek city-state, Phocaea, now sent its fleet west to
establish trading colonies at Massalia and Alalia (now Aleria) on eastern
Corsica. These Greeks were interested mainly in trade for metals, and
Etruria was the final resource. The capture of the Phocaean and other Ionian
homelands by the Persians actually sent floods of Greek refugees to the
west and thus Etruscan art of this period displays many Ionian
characteristics. The southern parts of France, Italy, Greece and Turkey are
today all very similar genetically in their populations, indicating the
probable influence of this early Greek colonization.

From about 540 B.C. onwards, the Caeritans, guided by lonian artists who
had flooded the area, developed an impressive new school of ceramics
which, among other things, produced handsome water jars with rich
polychrome paintings of Greek mythological scenes. The new wave of
Phocaean settlers who arrived at Alalia in mid-century extensively
plundered the surrounding territories with a consequent reaction by
Carthaginian and Caeritan navies. As noted earlier in this chapter when
discussing Carthage, these allies were actually defeated by the Phocaeans,
but the latter also lost 40 ships and soon took their families from Alalia to
Rhegum, in southwest Italy. The unfortunate Phocaean sailors of the 40
captured ships were slaughtered on the adjacent shore by the Caeritans.
(Ref. 92, 75)

NOTE: Insert Map taken from reference 97, GREEK AND
CARTHAGINIAN COLONIZATION OF SICILY AND SOUTHERN
ITALY

Vetulonia, to the north, seems to have reached the climax of its political
power during this century as a walled city with a two mile perimeter. It had
commercial relations across the Arno and Apennines and received amber
from the Baltic. One of the Vetulonia dominated cities was Populonia on a
peninsula projecting into the sea not far from Elba. It participated with the

island in iron and copper works and eventually became the real smelting
center, as the supply of wood fuel on Elba dwindled.

Still north of Vetulonia and bordering on the sea was Volaterrae, noted for
its fabrication of bronzes and sculptures of volcanic stone. The central city
was surrounded by a wall four and one-half miles long, and its area of
influence extended over to present day Florence, where mound tombs have
been excavated. Volaterrae's inland neighbor was Clusium, an area
originally occupied by Italic speaking Umbrians, but which eventually
became Etruscanized while yet remaining biracial. King Lars Porsenna of
Clusium was considered the most powerful Etruscan of all time, and his
tomb has been described as a magnificent edifice, 300 feet square. The
primary products of this inland community were agricultural, even though
vast irrigation and drainage projects were necessary to limit flood waters.
(Ref. 75)

CENTRAL EUROPE

In this century there was a continuing proliferation of the Hallstatt Celtic
people throughout central Europe with a thin fringe of Teutons in the north.
The Scythian nomads invaded, particularly in the great Hungarian plain,
and greatly influenced Celtic art and society in general. From them may
have come the war-horse with the bronze bits and harnesses and the head-
hunting custom, all of which were later considered a part of the Celtic
tradition. Bronze Age Indo-Europeans, Scythians and Greek concepts
apparently all coalesced into the new Celtic pattern, with a center at
Heuneburg, on the German Danube. (Ref. 116, 91)

WESTERN EUROPE

By 500 B.C. the influx of Celts into southwestern Spain (Andalusia) was so
great that the local spoken language changed from Phoenician to Celtic, but
even so the Tartessian culture persisted with Carthaginians taking over the
old Phoenician settlements. The Phocaean colony of Massilia was founded

on the Mediterranean coast of France in 600 B.C. and it allowed
commercial relations between the Celts and the Mediterranean cultures.
Vinyards may have been planted on French soil about this time, after the
Greeks started importing their own wine into the Marseilles area. All the
Atlantic coast and Britain continued under Celtic domination. (Ref. 65, 8,
196)

SCANDINAVIA

Although in this century iron was used exclusively for farming and war, the
Scandinavian tribes continued to make bronze implements, bibelots and
costume jewelry of great excellence and intricacy. The populations were
increasing rapidly and people were already beginning to migrate to the
European continent, proper. The Finnish people continued to live in widely
spread villages throughout the northern regions from northern Scandinavia
to and perhaps beyond the Ural Mountains. (Ref. 88)

EASTERN EUROPE

Finns and Lapps lived throughout the northern areas of Russia while Balts
inhabited the southern coast of the Baltic Sea and on east to the Don River.
South of the Balts were the early Slavs, and now through this area the
Scandinavians pushed up the Vistula River as far as the Carpathians. In
southern Russia the Scythians were decimated by a mysterious disease,
although Darius' invasion may have had something to do with it also. In the
spring of 514 B.C. Darius of Persia crossed the Bosporus with a vast army
and moved through Thrace into Scythia, but his 700,000 men were very
nearly consumed by the Scythians' military wizardry as they retreated using
a "scorched earth" policy, so that Darius finally had to withdraw the
remnants of his starving army. (Ref. 176)

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Europe: 500 to 401 B.C.

EUROPE

Back to Europe 600 to 501 B.C.

SOUTHERN EUROPE

EASTERN MEDITERRANEAN ISLANDS

With the ultimate Greek victory over the Persians, many Mediterranean
islands, including Rhodes and the Cyclades, now became dependents of
Athens. Even the Etruscan held island of Lemnos fell to Athenian control in
that period. At the end of the century, however, Rhodes pulled away,
forming its own confederacy of three city-states. (Ref. 38)

GREECE (THE 2ND CENTER OF CIVILIZATION)

In the first half of the century the city-states of Greece were occupied with
continuous warfare with Persia with the first Persian attack coming in 490
B.C. by sea. In 480 B.C. there was the great battle of Thermophylae and a
concurrent sea battle at Salamis in which Xerxes was defeated. Between
478 and 477 Athens organized the Delian League as a defense against
future imperialism, with members being the Aegean coast and island allies,
with headquarters at Delos, but with Athens as the leader. These Athenian
imperialistic policies were engineered by Cimon, aristocratic successor of
Themistocles. The Perisan wars ended about 449 B.C. as the Persian
Empire deteriorated and most of the Greek cities, even those on the coast of
Asia Minor and the Black Sea, became free.

The key to Athens’ extraordinary accomplishments in the first half of this
century lay in her fleet, which maintained control of the Aegean and
allowed goods from the eastern Mediterranean to enter through the port of

Piraeus. The fleet thus not only carried the war across the Aegean to help
liberate the Greek cities there, but also allowed foreign contact, thus
bringing new ideas and concepts, all of which set the stage for cultural
creativity. In this context we must not forget that behind all the shipping and
trade was the necessity for Greece to import food. The life-line demanded
grain, even though this 5th century B.C. did see the use of the domestic hen
in almost every Athenian household and Greece now became the home of
fine wines. Alfalfa was introduced by the Persians and subsequently the
Greeks used this as horse fodder. (Ref. 47, 222)

Some modern writers have a tendency to idealize Greek life of this century
and underplay some of the less tasteful aspects of that civilization. In all
Greek states abortion or abandonment of children was permitted. Sparta
arranged to prevent parents from knowing which were their own children
and vice versa, while the state decided whether or not any child would be
permitted to live. Homosexuality was widespread and publicly accepted.
Athens had between 75,000 and 150,000 slaves representing some 25 to
35% of the population. (Ref. 213, 222) Finley (Ref. 249) says that this
number is purely a guess, and that while the exact number of slaves is
unknown, the important fact is that this was a slave society. Urbanism and
the great increase in wealth initiated capitalism and with the extension of
full rights to the lower classes, free hired labor could not meet the needs of
the capitalists who, taking advantage of the almost continuous wars, turned
to ever larger scale slave labor.

As in Phoenicia, some Greek ports constructed in that time of low sea levels
in the Mediterranean are today below sea level. Medicine of that period in
Greece was a mixture of religious mysticism with some rational thought
and procedures. Ascelepios was worshipped as the God of Healing and
temples were erected for him for that purpose over many centuries and were
in present day terminology mixtures of religious shrines and health spas.
Alcaeon, possibly of this century, wrote a book Concerning Nature, which
may be the beginning of Greek medical literature, although only a few
fragments survive. He established a connection between the sensory organs
and the brain, described the optic nerves and concluded that the brain was
the organ of the mind, therefore also responsible for thought and memory. A

century later Aristotle thought erroneously that the heart was the center of
sensation. (Ref. 213, 281, 224, 125)

NOTE: Insert Map: GREECE DURING THE PERSIAN WARS

The period 475 - 429 B.C. has been called the "Golden Age of Pericles", the
greatest ruler of Athens. In view of the thousands of pages that have been
written concerning ancient Greece, it is sometimes difficult to keep things
in proper perspective. Attica was actually a small area, with Sunium, the
most distant point from Athens, being only forty miles away (although
admittedly this was a long walk, with only feet for transportation). It was,
however, a period of literature, plastic arts and the development of the
foundations of science. This was the time of Socrates, for whom philosophy
was neither theology nor metaphysics but ethics and politics with logic an
introduction and a means. (Ref. 47) It was the time of the historian
Herodotus (born about 484 B.C.) and in lonia the time of the great
physician Hippocrates who fostered the scientific approach to the treatment
of disease as opposed to the priests' explanation that disease was the result
of anger of the gods. He was born on the island of Cos in 460 B.C. and
became known eventually as the "Father of Medicine". Protagoras (480 -
410 B.C.) was the chief proponent of the Sophists, who taught the virtue of
proper use of words and a method of verbal reasoning according to rules of
argument whereby a man might hope to unravel all the mysteries of the
universe. Their doctrines, including one that stated that the law was a
conspiracy of the weak against the strong, provided the oligarchy with
justification for violence and chicanery used to overthrow the democracy
eventually (414 - 411 B.C.) Other philosophies included that of the Cynics
who cared only for virtue and relation of the soul to God with the world and
its learnings amounting to nothing; and the Stoics and Epicureans, using
logic and rhetoric toward a similar goal. Parmenides and Zeno, of the
famous paradoxes, were Eleatics. (Ref. 47, 221)

This great age of Greece ended with the Peloponnesian War - a war of
Sparta and her allies against Athens and hers, which raged for thirty years
beginning in 431 B.C. and which wasted all the power of Greece. Forty
years of aggressive Athenian imperialism and land grabbing activities had
forced most mainland cities to look to Sparta for leadership. Athens had

control of the seas but commanded few mainland areas outside of Attica,
and it was obvious from the beginning that neither side could win. Then in
430 and 429 B.C. a pestilence, which may have been a malignant form of
scarlet fever| footnote], killed off 25% of the Athenian land army.
Thucydides said the infection had begun in Ethiopia, run into Egypt and
Libya and most of Persia, then through Piraeus to Athens, itself. The latter
never fully recovered and lost the war to Sparta. A peace which was
supposed to last fifty years was declared in 421 B.C. but Athens resumed
expansionist ambitions, this time with cruelty and slaughter in conquered
islands. In reaction, the Persians financed a new Spartan navy commanded
by Lysander and he completely defeated the Athenian fleet at a great battle
at Aegospotami off the Hellespont in 405 B.C. The end came for Athens
when Lysander then cut off the grain supply line and laid siege to the city
itself in 404 B.C.. The final slaughter of the inhabitants matched the
previous plague of 430 - 429. Plato, a pupil of Socrates, grew up in the
atmosphere of this exhausting war. (Ref. 28, 140, 47)

An unsupported statement of Trager. (Ref. 222, page 17)

NOTE: Insert 21: GREECE DURING THE PELOPONNESIAN WAR

UPPER BALKANS

There was culture in Thrace and in the Greek colonies along the coast of the
Black Sea. Many cities had developed in Macedonia and by 450 B.C.,
under the reign of Alexander I, a veneer of Hellenic civilization had
appeared on the ruling classes of this area. (Ref. 218)

ITALY

Italy at this time was a motley of independent tribes and towns. There was
still a northern Etruscan presence near the Po River, with various cities
there. Virgil, the Roman poet of part Etruscan origin, describes his home of
Mantua as composed of three races which apparently included Etruscans,
Venetians and Umbrians, the latter two being Indo-European Italic speakers.

In Etruria, itself, in addition to Tarquinii and Caere, which we discussed at
some length in the last chapters, we should now discuss Vulci, the city-state
just north of Tarquinii.

In this 5th century B.C. it showed a marked Athenian influence, with the
Athenian "black-figure" pottery flooding the community. No less than 40%
of all Attic pottery that has been excavated in Etruria is from Vulci. But this
city's real claim to fame was its bronze-work, with multiple cast bronze
statues which were in turn exported afar, including back to Greece. It is
possible that Servius Tullius who ruled as King of Rome after Tarquinius
Priscus, was a Vulcentine with the original name of Mastarna. (Ref. 75)
Early in the century the Etruscans, at the height of their power and allied
with the Carthaginians, were at war with the Sicilian Greeks of Syracuse
and their King Hiero 1. (Please see also 1, B, this chapter), and in a great
naval battle off Cumae about 474 B.C. the Etruscan navy was destroyed.
They were then forced to withdraw from Campania and this secured the
liberation of Rome from Etruscan control. Even then, Cumae and Capua
alike were still subjected to several years (430 - 423 B.C.) of fighting some
hard-nosed mountain, Italic-speaking tribes, the Samnites. It was the
descendants of the latter who eventually forged a new Campanian nation. In
addition to the resistance of the Campanian Greeks the city-state of Caere
was further damaged by an attack by sixty Syracusan warships which
plundered harbors on the mainland and overran Elba and Corsica. (Ref. 75)

Up to this point Rome had actually only controlled an area of about
nineteen by nineteen miles, but they soon defeated the Sabines and
expanded into their area. In spite of the smallness of Rome, this was the
period of the Roman Republic. At the beginning (494 B.C.) there was the
first "secession" in which the plebes withdrew from Rome to form their
own city, forcing concessions from the patricians such as the right to have
officers of their own, tribunes and aediles. In the Republic there were four
classes of citizens; the Patricians, consisting of the superior clans which
supplied Rome with generals, consuls and laws for five centuries (the
Mantii, Valerii, Aemili, Cornelii, Fabii, Horatii, Claudii and Julii); the
Equites, or business men; the Plebs, or commons; and finally the Slaves.
The Roman Senate consisted of 300 members made up of clan heads from
three basic tribes, although occasionally an Equite got into that body. As a

result of a political battle for better laws for the Plebs, a commission was
sent to Greece to study the legislations of Solon and other lawmakers and
on their return, ten men (decemviri) formed a new code call "the Twelve
Tables" which were approved by the Assembly and became the first written
form of a legal structure of Rome (450 B.C.), serving as the basic law for
the next 900 years. In 443 B.C. appeared the institution of censorship and in
432 the first law designed to check electoral corruption was passed. At the
end of the century the long war of Rome against the Etruscan city, Veii in
Tuscany was started. At the same time the Gauls descended again from the
north and the Etruscans were squeezed in the middle. (Ref. 48)

Pei (Ref. 168) states that at 500 B.C. the Latin language was a rough,
elemental tongue, lacking most of the refinement of syntax and vocabulary
to come later.

The Greek Syracusans were busy through most of this century fighting and
defending their possessions. In the battle of Himera on the north Sicilian
shore in 480 B.C. they defeated the Carthaginians and then were able to
dominate the western Mediterranean. We have noted above how they
subsequently defeated the Etruscan navy. In 414 B.C. the Athenians
besieged Syracuse, but they too were defeated, their fleet destroyed and the
survivors were taken as quarry slaves.

The Greek Empedocles, living in Sicily, developed a theory of the
movement of blood to and from the heart, and performed various medical
"miracles". He is said to have raised a woman from the dead. Later, Galen
was to call him the Father of Italian medicine. (Ref. 28)

CENTRAL EUROPE

By 500 B.C. the greater part of the northern European coast was Germanic.
The first, or Germanic, sound shift in the Aryan tongue created a dividing
line between the Germanic and other Indo-European languages. Farther
south the Germanic groups were still checked by Celts. From 500 or 450
B.C. onward is the age of the La Tene Celtic Culture, named after
excavation sites in the region of Lake Neuchatel in Switzerland.

Corresponding to the Golden Age of Greece, there was a wave of Celtic
expansion, with battles against the cities of the classical world. They used
two-wheeled chariots as cavalry in tactical units of three and tribal foot
soldiers armed with spears, slings and tall wooden shields decorated with
metal bosses, but there were no bows and arrows. The Switzerland Celts
extracted tolls as they controlled the head of the Seine navigation on the tin
route from Britain to the bronze workshops of Italy. At that time the
Rhineland had already become important in iron ingot production. A
reverse flow of Etruscan bronzes went back up the river route and those art
objects found in Germany, as well as in Belgium and Luxemburg, had
definite influence on Celtic art. (Ref. 168, 194, 8, 75)

Recent excavations at Hochdorf (near Stuttgart) in southwestern Germany
indicate that the Celts of south Germany had a stratified society with an
aristocratic class that lived in hilltop fortresses. The wealth of that class was
based on trade links with Greek colonies in Italy and southern France and
with the Etruscans. The large tombs of the aristocrats were sometimes one
hundred meters in diameter and held Mediterranean drinking vessels,
furniture and other household luxuries. The average life span at that time
was about thirty years. The Hallstatt culture existed in two great regions,
one in the west with clear Celtic features and an eastern one in Carinthia,
the north Adriatic and Yugoslavia, which included the Illyrians and the
Veneti.

WESTERN EUROPE

On the east coast of Spain and at Massilia on the Mediterranean coast of
France there were Greek colonies, but otherwise all France and the Atlantic
coast was Gaulic (Celtic). These people also overran the basic population of
Ireland, bringing iron to that land as well as to Britain, where its use rapidly
outstripped bronze after 450 B.C. The Celts who arrived in Britain in this
era were Brythonians, or P-Celtic speakers, from the early La Tene Culture
on the continent. (Ref. 43, 222)

On the North Sea between the Somme and Aller rivers, including present
day Holland, northeastern France, northwestern Germany and most of

Denmark is an area where place- names still show remnants of a language
neither Celtic nor German. The Celts never got this far north and the
Germans for a long time were west of the Aller. A prehistoric people were
apparently squeezed between the Celts and the Germans in that location.
(Ref. 8)

SCANDINAVIA

In this century there was a true Iron Age in Scandinavia and a period of
continued proliferation of Germanic tribes, some of which were spilling
over into Europe proper.

EASTERN EUROPE

The Finns and the Balts occupied the same respective territories as in the
preceding century. In the Slav zone of Poland a new fashion of decorating
urns with faces replaced the old Lausitz style. This change appears to have
spread southeastward from the Baltic. Areas of quite advanced civilization
existed in the Greek colonies on the Black Sea and at the Persian borders
near the Caspian.

On the Russian steppe the Iranian tribes between the Don and the Aral Sea
became known as the Sarmatians while those farther west were Scythians,
now becoming farmers. Southern Russia was both cooler and more moist
than earlier or than now and instead of the previously existing steppe
country, by 500 B.C. wooded or partly wooded country extended from
Romania east for one thousand miles to the Don River. This tended to
restrict nomadic foraging and raiding. It was in this century that Herodotus,
the Greek historian, visited Albia on the north shore of the Black Sea and
wrote of the Scythians. (Ref. 92) He mentioned that some of the Scythians
grew grain, not for their own use, but for sale chiefly to the Greeks. East of
these farmers were the largest and bravest of the Scythian tribes, reaching
as far east as the Don. They used large cow stomachs to hold thirty to forty
gallons of water. It is said that the natives of the Caucasus Mountains were

still practicing cannibalism at this time. (Ref. 215)(Ref. 176) (Ref. 92)(Ref.
211)(Ref. 213)

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5. The Far East

6. The Indian Subcontinent
7. The Near East

8. Pacific

Europe: 400 to 301 B.C.

Europe

Back to Europe: 500 to 401 B.C.

SOUTHERN EUROPE

EASTERN MEDITERRANEAN ISLANDS

In the last third of this century, all these islands were conquered by the men
of Alexander the Great, but his control was short-lived. By 323 B.C.
Rhodes was independent again and Cyprus belonged to Egypt until
Demetrius Poliocertes, aspirant to the throne of Macedon, took Cyprus
again. Then in 307 he besieged Rhodes, using 30,000 men to build siege
towers and engines, but all of this failed. (Ref. 38, 222)

GREECE

Throughout the peninsula there was endless conflict between the slaves and
the ruined proletarian masses who demanded that the state support them.
Up until about 378 B.C. the police force of Athens consisted of about 300
state-owned Scythian slaves. At the beginning of the century Sparta, having
won the Peloponnesian War with the help of subsidies from Persia,
dominated southern Greece; then, by forming an "Arcadian League",
Thebes took over control from about 370 to 360 B.C.; then Athens, with
growing special- ization of professional soldiers and generals, professional
orators and financial experts be- came supreme for awhile. But in the last
part of the century the unity which the Greeks could not find among
themselves was forced on them by Philip of Macedon. The battle of
Chaeronea (338 B.C.) was the end of Greek liberty and the beginning, in
some sense, of Greek unity. (Ref. 28, 8)

In spite of the wars this was one of the great eras of culture. Plato lived until
well into this century and the political problems always remained a central
issue for him and he became a frustrated politician. The mainly hereditary
tripartite class division of the "Republic" corresponded closely to the
divisions of 6th century B.C. Greek society, with an aristocracy that guided
the state, citizens who fought for the polis and slaves and foreigners who
labored. Plato brought together diverse intellectual strands from different
parts of the Greek world and he did so with a consummate artistry that few
have even equaled, giving to subsequent Greek and European philosophy its
central themes and problems, as well as much of its working vocabulary. It
is not generally realized that Plato also wrote medical speculations, logical
but without any direct experimentation and leading to many faulty
conclusions about the human body, errors that persisted well into later
centuries and were difficult to eradicate. (Ref. 47, 125)

Near the end of the century Aristotle, a pupil of Plato, returned from his
travels with Alexander to found the Peripatetic School or Lyceum.
Scientific material of all kinds had come to him through the Greek-
Macedonian armies' conquests (Please see next section UPPER
BALKANS) and his work became the basis of knowledge even 1,500 years
later in the Middle Ages of Europe. Aristotle pioneered in biology,
embryology and physiology and was a champion of inductive reasoning.
Three great structural ideas appeared in this era which rule the mind of
contemporary mankind today: ( 1) Science, in the broad sense, including
history and relation of man to the total environment; (2) the idea of one
universal God of righteousness; and (3) the concept of world policy.

Theophrastus followed Aristotle as head of the Lyceum and established the
basic concepts of botanical science, collecting data from as far as India.
Democritus, early in the century, had described the universe as being
composed of atoms (indivisible particles incapable of destruction) and a
vacuum. This theory was rejected by Aristotle but was to be emphasized
again in the 1st century B.C. by Lucretium.

Hippocrates also lived well into this century. He described a mumps
epidemic and some three and four day fevers which may have been tertian
and quartan malaria. Other diseases described suggest diphtheria and either

tuberculosis or influenza. Nothing was mentioned that suggested small-pox,
measles or plague at that time. Whether all the teachings that we have come
to accept as Hippocratic writings are actually the work of one man, or
many, is not known. There were simultaneously great medical centers on
Cos and on the Asia Minor mainland at Cnidos and the final collections of
"Hippocratic" writings at the great library at Alexandria in the last part of
this century may have actually been contributions from many Greek
physicians. Injuries to bone and joints made up a large part of medical
practice and manipulations to reduce fractures and dislocations were
sophisticated and sometimes associated with very complex bandaging and
mechanical devices. The cautery was used and there was extensive use of
minor surgical procedures for tumors, fistulas, ulcers and hemorrhoids. The
juice of the opium poppy and of the mandragora[ footnote] was available for
anesthesia and pain relief . Books numbering seventy-two and treatises at
about fifty-nine have been credited to Hippocrates. Case histories of some
diseases are superb, but the anatomy, physiology and therapy, of course,
was of ten poor and the specific diagnosis of any disease was seldom given.
The ethics, conduct and appearance of the physician was emphasized. (Ref.
229,125, 140)

This is hyoscyamus (also scopolamine), an ingredient of "twilight sleep"

Of incidental interest is the fact that it was not until this century that the
new raised wheat bread from Egypt became popular in Greece. (Ref. 211)
The last third of the century saw the affairs of Greece subjected to the
domination of their Macedonian neighbors - originally enemies and then
allies. This situation will be discussed at greater length in the next section.

UPPER BALKANS

The Macedonians, occupying most of the area we know as Yugoslavia and
Bulgaria, were kin to the Greeks and their language was almost Greek, but
they were more purely Nordic than any people to the south and their
appearances and customs were similar to the wild Celts of the period. Philip
II, who became Macedonian king in 359 B.C. by simply seizing the throne
after he had been appointed regent for his nephew, was a leader-king of the
ancient Nordic-Aryan type. Having previously been held hostage for a short

time in Thebes, he had gained much knowledge of the Greeks and he
immediately developed an army trained in the effective Theban phalanx
formation and proceeded to enlarge his kingdom to the north by subduing
the Thracians with their gold mines of Mount Pangaion and then east and
south to the upper part of the Aegean Sea. In spite of drunkenness and other
personal vices, he was probably the best educated man of his time and with
his son's tutor, Aristotle; it was he who planned most of the greatness that
his son Alexander achieved. After he gained an Aegean coastline and the
Thracian gold he soon conquered the coastline of Thessaly. Although there
was much bickering and changes of alliances in Greece the main obstacle to
Philip's control of the entire peninsula was always Athens, where
Demosthenes constantly used his oratorical abilities to denounce him. His
troops finally defeated an Athenian coalition, however, in 338 B.C. at
Chaeronea in Boeotia. Subsequently, at a congress of Greek states Philip
was elected, or at least recognized, as Captain-General of all the Greeks for
an all-out war against the old enemy, Persia. Thus Macedonia rose to
political importance by assimilating aspects of Hellenism. (Ref. 28, 72,
179)

Actually the great battle with Persia was not enjoined until after Philip's
assassination and Alexander's coronation as king. Within a few years
Alexander had conquered all western Asia and a part of India and Egypt,
carving out an empire 3,000 miles wide and in most regions up to 1,000
miles from north to south, thus approaching the size of the United States.
As accompanying maps will show, the boundaries were almost identical
with the previously existing Persian Empire. All of this was conquered
within about twelve years without motorized vehicles and only about
35,000 men including some 5,000 mercenaries. He initiated the use of a
torsion catapult to shoot arrows and stones, beginning a whole new era in
siege warfare. (Ref. 222, 213) At least thousands and perhaps hundreds of
thousands of Greeks followed in Alexander's footsteps, emigrating to the
East and giving a deep Hellenic imprint over and above the purely military
conquest. Alexander died in 323 B.C. at the age of thirty-three years, a man
of tremendous vanity, at times kind and considerate and at other times
vicious, cruel and destructive. He died in Mesopotamia, possibly of malaria.
(Ref. 125)

Alexander set up no competent administrations in the various conquered
areas and after his death the empire rapidly collapsed, with division of the
territory among the various Greek generals. Initially the divisions were as
follows:

1. General Seleucus controlled the Asian part of the old Persian Empire
and the south half of Asia Minor except the coast, clear across
southwest Asia to the Indus

2. General Antigonus kept Macedonia itself, but by 301 B.C. he was
killed in battle and his son Demetrius I was defeated as Lysimachus
took the area of Thrace and Cassander took Macedonia and Greece

3. General Ptolemy took Egypt, along with most of the coast of the
eastern Mediterranean, including Judea and the old Phoenicia and the
coast of Asia Minor

NOTE: Insert Map 22. THE EMPIRE OF ALEXANDER THE GREAT

ITALY

In 400 B.C. the Gauls plundered Etruria in northern Italy, conquering
Felsina, which subsequently became known as Bononia. Ten years later,
under King Brennus, they sacked Rome itself and retreated only after the
payment of 1,000 pounds of gold. Thus began the long Roman-Gallic wars
which did not end until the time of Julius Caesar in the 1st century of the
Christian era. In spite of the Gauls, Perusia, which had broken free from
Clusium, was the most powerful Etruscan center in the upper Tiber Valley.
The Clusines spread their alphabet up the Adriatic coast to Venetia and the
northeast and it became the basis of the alphabets of Venetia, Illyria and
Raetia as well as of the German and Scandinavian runes. Meanwhile the
Romans also had to continue to fight the Etruscan city-state of Veii,
destroying it about 396 B.C. and then take on the powerful and highly
civilized Samnite tribes of southern Italy. The only Etrurian power left in
the immediate vicinity of Rome was Tarquinii and a seven year war flared
up with it in 358 B.C. In 343 B.C. the Greek cities in Campania (Naples
area) joined the Samnites in their campaign against Rome, but in spite of all
this warfare some advancement of civilization did occur in Rome. The

Compromise of Camillus in 367 B.C. gave concessions to the Plebes and
internal dissension stopped, leaving energies free for expansion. The
Appian Way was started at this time. While the Etruscan towns had always
remained small, chiefly in the 5,000 to 10,000 bracket, early in this century
Rome probably passed the 10,000 mark and drew level with Tarentum, the
largest Greek city in Italy. (Ref. 75, 8, 136)

Although after the destruction of Veii by the Romans the Etruscan
preponderance in central Italy came to an end, some Etruscan cities still
flourished. Vulci had failed to help Veii in its death struggle and continued
to exist as a thriving city. After a forty year truce, fighting again flared up
between Rome and Tarquinii with the former the final victor in 314 B.C. At
long last Caere had finally broken with Rome and had joined Tarquinii in its
last days. Its independence gone, Caere still was a great cosmopolitan city
to which Roman sons were sent to learn the Etruscan language and
literature. (Ref. 75)

In the last of the century the Gauls actually settled down in northern Italy
(Cisalpine Gaul) laying the foundations for the cities of Turin, Bergamo and
Milan. The Kyllyrioi disappeared from Sicily in the early century and
slavery became the only form of involuntary labor and this remained so
after the island was conquered by the Romans. (Ref. 249) (For more about
Sicily, see NORTH CENTRAL AFRICA).

CENTRAL EUROPE

The population of this region was essentially Celtic, particularly in Austria
and Germany, although some Germanic tribes were wandering down from
Scandinavia about the Vistula River and these may have been pushed
somewhat west at this time by Huns leaving the region of the Volga.
McEvedy (Ref. 136) writes that there were still no Teutons south of the
latitude of Berlin and that this was to remain so for two more centuries. East
of the Germanic tribes were the Balts and the Slavs.

The Hallstatt Celtic culture in Austria was based on salt which was mined
particularly at Salzburg and at Durrnberg near Hallein. In Bohemia tin

became an important export. The newer La Tene Culture evolved full
flower in the old Celtic homelands, marking the second phase of the P-
Celtic speakers' expansion. They developed an original art, part of which
involved covering tiny surfaces of pots, sword sheaths and ornaments with
mazes of lines, tiny animal figures and faces, all cut in minute detail. They
manufactured brass and covered copper objects with tin and silvered them
over with mercury.

In their first contacts with the Mediterranean world the Celtic people struck
terror throughout the existing civilizations. They were tall, blond, with hair
standing up stiff from their foreheads from lime washings, and then hanging
long behind like horses' manes. They wore long mustaches and dressed in
brightly colored shirts and breeches with cloaks fastened at the shoulder
with brooches. The cloaks were striped or checkered. Some wore bronze
helmets and chain breast armor, although others went naked into battle
where they charged with wild screaming and singing, some on foot and
some in four-wheeled chariots drawn by two horses and carrying one driver
and one javelin thrower. Cavalry operated in the same way, each mount
with two riders. But the most terrifying of all was their custom of cutting
off their enemies’ heads and nailing them over the doors of their huts.

In general the Celts preferred to remain potentially mobile and kept their
possessions all in a state of readiness for travel, but in some locations they
did build rather impressive settlements. One such was near Manching,
Bavaria, where the outer wall was four miles long, enclosing an area of
some forty thousand acres. There is evidence of goldsmiths, bronze
foundries, iron and glass works, potteries and trading houses. Not far away
was a foundry where sixty-two smelt furnaces have been excavated. Every
Celtic town had small foundries and most had salt sources nearby. (Ref. 91)

WESTERN EUROPE

The La Tene Celts were at their peak of power throughout France (Gaul),
England, Wales, Scotland and Ireland. In Spain there were also Celts, but
Carthage had established a protectorate over all the Iberian tribes up as far
as the Pyrenees. An interesting side-light on the nature of the early Iberian

language is offered by Barry Fell. (Ref. 66) We have generally been told
that the early language of the Mediterranean world was unique and that
perhaps remnants today are to be found in Basque and tongues of the
Caucasus. Fell says that a recent study would indicate that the old Iberic
language was Semitic and closely related to classical Arabic. A recently
found stone inscription from eastern Spain at Pujol was in the ancient
Iberian letters but was Greek in language. This probably dates to about 300
B.C. when Carthage still dominated Mediterranean shipping.

The entire British Isles, called "Pretanic Islands of Albion and Ierne" were
circumnavigated by Pytheas of Marseilles, but his story was not believed at
that time. His journey had been made possible by the opening of the Straits
of Gibralter as the entire Carthaginian navy had been withdrawn to attack
Sicily. As a result of the astronomical observations made by Pytheas on that
trip to Britain, he began to get the first hint of the curvature of the earth, and
he incidentally located the Cornish tin mines. London may have had its
origin about 400 B.C. when a Celtic king, Belin, rebuilt an earth wall
around a few dozen huts where the Walbrook joins the Thames and then cut
an opening in the south wall for a landing spot. (Ref. 222) That
Carthaginians were also in Britain in this century is at- tested by the finding
of Carthaginian coins in two primary areas, dating to this period.

This is probably the time when the Picts either invaded Scotland or made
themselves known as an aboriginal people. Their real origin is unknown,
although the most recent thought is that they may have migrated from the
north of the continent. In later times they spoke P-Celtic, but this may have
been acquired from a wave of Celts and probably does not represent their
native tongue. The Romans named them "Picts", meaning "painted ones".
(Ref. 91, 170, 196)

SCANDINAVIA

A period of continued multiplication of the Germanic tribes.

EASTERN EUROPE

The basic populations of this region showed no basic change from the
previous century. From the north down there were Finns, Balts, Slavs and
finally the Scythians just north of the Black Sea. The uncertain history and
legends of the Scythians were clarified, in part at least, by excavations of
burial mounds in the 18th century C.E., with recovery of some twenty
exquisitely carved gold objects found in a mine shaft and given to Czar
Peter of Russia. The archeologists found subsequently that Herodotus '
descriptions of royal funerals was accurate, in that concubine, butler, cook,
groom and stewards, all strangled, were buried with the royal personage. In
addition gold cups, large collars made of twisted metal and other treasures,
were included. It is apparent that gold was a sacred part of Scythian life, the
metal coming from the Caucasus, Ural and distant Ural mountain ranges.
We have then, an ancient barbarous, bloody people who at the same time
were creative artists, working in gold. About 350 B.C. a still stronger,
crueler, but related people, the Sauromatae, began crossing the Don,
scattering the Scythians before them. Some of the latter went to Thrace
(Romania) and some stayed in the Crimea, with a capital at Neapolis. If we
are to believe Herodotus, writing a century earlier, the Sauromatae spoke a
language similar to Scythian because some Amazon women had, in effect,
seduced some Sythian boys and taken them back to their home across the
Don. It was perhaps these women who allegedly rode and fought alongside
their men, giving rise to the legend that Scythian women were warriors.
Herodotus writes that no Sauromatae Amazon could marry until she had
killed a man in battle. (Ref. 176, 136, 92)

Forward to Europe: 300 to 201 B.C.
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2. Africa

3. America

4. Central and Northern Asia
5. The Far East

6. The Indian Subcontinent
7. The Near East

8. Pacific

Europe: 300 to 201 B.C.

EUROPE
Back to Europe: 400 to 301 B.C.

At 300 B.C. there were Celts in every part of Europe excepting
Scandinavia, the southern portions of Italy and Greece and Russia. Most of
the European river names such as the Rhine, Main (Moin), Neckar, Lahn,
Ruhr, Isar, etc. are Celtic in origin. If the various Celtic tribes could have
gotten along together and made a concerted effort they could have created
one of the greatest empires in European history, but they didn't. (Ref. 91)

SOUTHERN EUROPE

EASTERN MEDITERRANEAN ISLANDS

Crete had become a haven for Mediterranean pirates. The Cylades were
under Greek control. South of Asia Minor Rhodes had become a powerful
commercial state. The "Colossus of Rhodes" was completed in 280 B.C. by
the sculptor, Chares, after twelve years of work with the spoils left by
Demetrius' unsuccessful siege in the previous century. Rising 120 feet, this
bronze statue of the sun god was so large that a ship could pass between its
legs. (Ref. 28, 222)

GREECE

This was a time of considerable chaos and confusion in the Greek
peninsula. The Galatian Celts in about 280 B.C. raided from high up in the
Balkans down through Macedonia and into Greece proper and were
defeated only with great difficulty. The Celtic army probably had no more
than 30,000 men and was led by Brennus, of the same name as the chieftain
who had sacked Rome over a century before. Greece was divided among

the Aetolian League, which expanded in the north central and western area
by force, the Achaean League, which expanded by contract and the
independent states of Sparta and Athens. The former was defeated in 222
B.C. by a coalition of Achaeans with the Macedonian King Antigonus
Doson.

Although there was a shift of Greek science and medicine to Alexandria,
philosophy was still prevalent in the homeland. Epicurus founded
Epicureanism, a belief that pleasure is the chief good, but that the greatest
pleasure may be obtained through a life of temperance and simplicity. The
great evil that afflicts man is fear of gods and fear of death. The ultimate
aim of all Epicurean theories and teaching was to rid humanity of these two
fears. (Ref. 47, 91)

UPPER BALKANS

When the Macedonian leader, Cassander, died in 297 B.C., Demetrius I
(Poliocertes) returned again to try for the king-ship. He did take Athens in
295 B.C. but was eventually deserted by his own troops and became a
prisoner of Seleucus for the rest of his life. (Ref. 222) Celtic peoples were
collecting in the upper Balkan area, fighting among themselves and
periodically raiding southward, shattering all balance of power in
Alexander's old empire and the first divisions among his generals and their
immediate successors.

The Macedonians, themselves, were completely overrun for a short while.
At the end of the century as Hannibal gave Rome its most terrible war,
Philip of Macedon sided with Hannibal and the skirmishes of Macedonian
soldiers with Romans in this issue of the main war was called the First
Macedonian War.

An Illyrian kingdom was set up at this period with a capital at Scodra
(modern Scutari, Albania) but because of Illyrian piracy tendencies the
Romans had cause to war also against them and ultimately defeat them.
South and west of Macedonia, the small but strong kingdom of Epirus

flourished and even attacked Italy across the Adriatic Sea at the instigation
of the local Greek city-states. (Ref. 28)

ITALY

This was a century of great Roman activity. By 290 B.C. all territory of the
Sabines had come under Roman rule, and after the battle of Lake Vadimo
about 280 B.C. the Samnite resistance was crushed and Rome controlled all
the harbors of Italy as well as having perhaps 40,000 slave-captives. In 281
B.C. a Roman general had also triumphed over Etruscan Volsinii and Vulci.
Italy was densely populated by a hardy peasantry, which gave the Romans a
dependable pool of military man-power. Their labor force, like the Greeks
before them, was slaves. Rome, too, was a slave society. (Ref. 249)

NOTE: Insert 23: ITALY BEFORE THE FIRST PUNIC WAR 264 B.C.

In the meantime, Pyrrhus, king of Epirus in the Balkans, and a kinsman of
Alexander the Great, responded to pleas of the Greek city-states of
Syracuse (Sicily) and Tarentum on the heel of the boot and helped them
fight the Romans for control of south Italy. Rome was even joined by
Carthage in this particular fight, in the attempt to keep Pyrrhus out of Sicily.
King Pyrrhus brought 25,000 men and many elephants which terrified the
Italians and he initially won some victories at Heraclea (280 B.C.) and
Asculum (279 B.C.) but lost many men and much strength, so that by 275
Rome had won and had reached the toe and heel of the boot of Italy.
Carthage still held the western end of Sicily. (Ref. 8, 28)

By 260 B.C. Rome controlled 10,000 square miles of Italy, and with her
allies another 52,000 square miles. It had about 292,000 men and its allies
about 750,000, with a total population of about 3,000,000. This powerful
confederacy had now become a potential challenge to Carthage and war
between the two great powers broke out in 264 B.C. This First Punic War
began a century of warfare for the mastery of the Mediterranean. With
Hamilcar (see footnote on page 243) leading the Carthaginians and Regulus
becoming the Roman hero, this was essentially a series of gigantic sea
battles with a few land skirmishes in Sicily and the southern tip of Italy. The

Romans won the sea battles by the "corvus", a boarding crane that allowed
their soldiers to board the Carthaginian ships. (See NORTH CENTRAL
AFRICA, earlier in this chapter, page 233). Carthage sued for peace in 241
B.C., giving Sicily to Rome and removing restrictions on Roman trade in
the Mediterranean. In the next four years, while Carthage was torn by a
bloody internal revolution, Rome took Sardinia and Corsica in treaty
violations. (Ref. 48, 8)

These treaty violations set the stage for the Second Punic War beginning in
219 B.C. and continuing until 201. The Carthaginian General Hannibal (See
footnote on page 243) entered Spain, enlisted Gaul mercenaries| footnote],
got help from Macedonia and Sicily, crossed the Alps with men and
elephants, conquered most of Italy except Rome itself, and in a final winter,
bedded his army down in Capua, south of Rome. He was poorly supplied
from Carthage through Tarentum, which had fallen in 209 B.C. and his
troops now seemed to lose their vigor. (Ref. 229) In 202 B.C. Hannibal was
called back to Carthage where he was finally defeated by the Roman
General Scipio, who was helped by Numidian cavalry under King
Massinissa. In the end, Rome controlled all of Italy and Spain, but it was a
costly war which changed Roman life considerably. There was an increase
in urbanity with damage to the concept of democracy and the beginning of
imperialistic expansion. Other factors may have played additional roles in
the ending of rural simplicity. Apparently a declining rainfall about 250
B.C. provoked a marked decrease in the flow of Italian rivers, with resulting
formation of mosquito-breeding marshes and stagnant pools. The
mosquitoes, in turn, brought malaria. Grain production dropped and the
grapevine and the olive began to be the big crops, so that even when the
rains returned late in the century, Rome was already dependent forever on
imported grain. The tens of thousands of slaves obtained in warfare
augmented the slave society. But the capstone and triumph of Roman
democracy also occurred in this century with the Lex Hortensia, in 287
B.C., a law in which the Senate agreed that decisions of the tribal assembly
should have the force of law, even when contrary to the resolutions of the
Senate.

14,000 Gaul mercenaries signed up with Hannibal and in addition a whole
series of Celtic units in the Roma legions killed their officers and taking
their victims heads along, deserted to the Carthaginians. (Ref. 91)

NOTE: Insert 25. THE PUNIC WARS 264-146 B.C.

In Sicily it was the time of Archimedes and his great scientific
accomplishments. When King Hiero of Syracuse went over to Hannibal's
side in the Second Punic War, the Romans sieged Syracuse and
Archimedes' invention of the water screw held the Romans at bay for some
time. In the final attack on the city in 212 B.C., however, the scientist was
killed. He had already established the laws of levers, methods of
measurement of a sphere and a cylinder, the value of Pi and various laws of
hydrostatics. He had either studied in Alexandria or had been in close
contact with scholars from there.

CENTRAL EUROPE

The Celtic settlement of Austria was well under way by 279 B.C. and the
great salt mines of Salzburg and adjacent areas were in operation. A tribe
called "Teutones" had settled close to the Main River and some have
interpreted this to mean that Germanic tribes were already in this area, but
these were actually simply another Celtic tribe, and the true Teutonic or
Germanic tribes had not yet left the northern reaches of Germany.

WESTERN EUROPE

SPAIN AND PORTUGAL

In the first half of the century Spain was essentially under the control of
Carthage and there were various wars of the local Iberian, Ligurian and
Celtic tribes against these overlords. The First Punic War had stimulated the
Carthaginians to increase their dominance of Iberia. In 238 B.C. after the
first Punic war, Hamilcar Barcal crossed to Spain and recaptured those
cities for Carthage whose allegiance had lapsed during the war years.
Tradition has it that he founded Barcelona and Cartagena and that in
accordance with his recommendations to his troops to intermarry with the

natives, his own son, Hannibal, did so. He died during a charge against a
Spanish tribe and Hasdrubal[footnote], nephew of Hamilcar, continued a
three year campaign and then signed a treaty at Cartagena with Roman
envoys agreeing not to go north of the Ebro River. Rome feared
Carthaginian alliance with the Celts in the Pyrenees. By 221 B.C., however,
Hamilcar's son, Hannibal, incorporating many Iberians in his army had
captured Roman-Greek Saguntum on the east coast and precipitated the
Second Punic War. By 218 B.C. Hannibal had crossed the Pyrenees to
advance through France to Italy.

There were generals named Hamilcar, Hannibal and Hasdrubal in the 5th
century B.C. as well as these apparent descendants in this 3rd century B.C.

The Roman General Scipio the elder went from his home in Rome to Spain
to fight the rear guard of the Carthaginian army which was still under the
command of Hasdrubal and by 205 B.C. Spain had become a Roman
province although the complete conquest actually took another 200 years
with heavy toll in men and money because of constant guerilla warfare.
Scipio, however, took his army to Africa to attack Carthage directly. It was
his son, Scipio Africanus, however, who fought the final battles in Africa.
(Ref. 91, 196)

FRANCE AND NETHERLANDS & BELGIUM

As previously mentioned concerning the Celts in general, the Gauls
bleached their hair and wore jewelry but they were also vicious fighters,
charging into battle some- times wearing chain mail and sometimes naked
or wearing only collars and bracelets and formidable mustaches. Some were
very tall, fair-haired and blue-eyed and may have been a ruling class over
other shorter and dark-haired people. As did their central European
brothers, they cut off their enemies heads and hung them around their
horses necks, often later lining the skulls of enemy generals with gold.
When not fighting they feasted, drank and hunted. The Gallic women of ten
fought beside their men (See Queen Boadicca in 1st century C.E. under
BRITISH ISLES). On their southern flanks the Celtic tribes were showing a
gradual rising of their cultural level as contact was made with the southern
civilizations, particularly Rome. (Ref. 194)

BRITISH ISLES

The new waves of La Tene Celts were even more warlike than their
predecessors and became a warrior aristocracy in Wales and Cornwall. The
Welsh and Cornish languages are survivors of these gifted, virile people
who were prone to inter-tribal warfare and dynastic feuds. They squandered
their force in endless competitiveness. Barry Fell (Ref. 66) has allegedly
translated an ancient Irish manuscript of the 2nd century B.C. which
appears to be a copy of a 3rd century document, because of reference to
certain Italian and Sicilian coins of the latter century, and which appears to
be a code of laws for Irish Celts, written by a Spanish Gael. This would
indicate a much earlier presence of Celts in Ireland then usually stated. The
Picts of Scotland were never a united people in these early centuries and the
tribes watred with each other constantly.

SCANDINAVIA

Scandinavian tribes continued to expand and this may have been the period
when they displaced a Mongolian people akin to or antecedents of the
Laplanders and Esquimos, pushing them into the frozen north.

EASTERN EUROPE

Southern Russia and the Eurasian steppe was still the breeding ground of
various barbarian Aryan tribes which periodically moved toward Europe
proper and down into southwestern Asia. The Scythians were gradually
being replaced by their racial and linguistic kinsmen, the Samaritans, about
whom we have written previously.

Forward to Europe: 200 to 101 B.C.
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5. The Far East

6. The Indian Subcontinent
7. [he Near East

8. Pacific

Europe: 200 to 101 B.C.

EUROPE

Back to Europe: 300 to 201 B.C.

SOUTHERN EUROPE

EASTERN MEDITERRANEAN ISLANDS

As the commerce of Rhodes declined the government allied itself with
Rome, a situation which was to continue for several centuries. In the
Cyclades there were frequent changes of control. Crete remained a
somewhat wild area with nests of pirates while Cyprus was still subservient
to Egypt. (Ref. 38)

GREECE

From this time on for a number of centuries the affairs and destiny of
Greece became intimately connected and almost inseparable from the
Roman Empire and the military and political expansion of Hellenism lost
momentum. The Romans fastened their control on Macedonia and Greece
with remarkable ease between 200 and 146 B.C.. Sparta, under Nabis,
attempted a revival of independence in 195 B.C. but it ended with Roman
conquest. At the request of the Aetolians, Antiochus HI brought Syrian
forces into Greece in 192 B.C., but they, too, were routed by the Romans in
the following year. Various members of the Achaean League fought as late
as 146 B.C., but they did so in a divided way and fell, to become a mere
backwater of the Roman Empire. As a political entity Greece disappeared
from history for 2,000 years. (Ref. 28, 222, 77)

UPPER BALKANS

It was mentioned in the last chapter that Philip of Macedonia had given
some help to Hannibal and that had started the Second Macedonian War in
200 B.C. Although Philip was beaten in a final battle at Cynoscephalae in
197 B.C. he was graciously restored to his throne by the Roman victor, T.
Quincteus Flamininus. (Ref. 8) As Rome took over more territory in Asia
Minor Greek-Macedonian and Roman interests again collided, opening the
way for the Third Macedonian War (171-168 B.C.) in which Perseus was
defeated at Pydna. After seventy Macedonian towns were razed the Romans
took direct rule of the country in 146 B.C. In the latter half of the century
with its gold deposits exhausted and its manpower weakened by wars and
emigration, Macedon could hardly maintain its former place among the
world powers.

On the western coast of the Balkan area the Romans conquered Scodra
(Albania) with its King Genthius, and established Illyrium as one of the
earliest of the Roman colonies. Living in the areas of modern Yugoslavia
and Serbia the Dalmatians split from the Illyrians and in several later battles
Dalmatia was also then conquered by the Romans. The first Germanic tribe
to reach into this area was the east German Bastarnian, which settled
between the lower Danube and the Black Sea. (Ref. 8, 136)

ITALY (The map on page 242 will be applicable again)

In the first half of the century Rome continued the imperialistic conquests
in the Mediterranean basin so that by 150 B.C. its territories included most
of Spain, all of Italy to the Alps, Sardinia, Sicily, Illyria and the entire
Greek peninsula. Allies included Numidia, Egypt, Pontus and after 133
B.C. Pergamum. In 159 B.C. after encouraging the Numidians to encroach
upon Carthage to stimulate a fight locally, Rome moved in on the pretext of
a broken treaty, declaring the Third Punic War. As noted in an earlier
section, by 145 B.C. Carthage lay in burned ruins and Rome was in control
of the Mediterranean. A typical Roman of this time was Cato, a sour,
revengeful man - publicly moral, but individually cruel and selfish. He

could not stand happiness in other people and it was he who urged on the
Third Punic War with the slogan "Carthage must be destroyed". (Ref. 48)

Meanwhile at home all was not well and the signs of social downfall were
already appearing. An uprising of slaves and free workers began in 196
B.C. and gradually increased in intensity. In 193 Tiberius Gracchus passed
the Agrarian Law which was an attempt at reform, dividing large farms into
segments to be given to the poor. Octavius, another tribune, opposed the
reform and Tiberius had him thrown out, dividing Rome into two bitter
factions. Tiberius was soon murdered and although his brother, Gaius
Gracchus, became tribune and continued the reforms, the aristocrats won in
the end and the land again began to be accumulated in large tracts and
wealth concentrated in the hands of a few. Coupled with this was a general
moral degeneration with restriction of the size of families by abortion and
infanticide. The plunder from the provinces provided funds for orgies of
corruption. The great indemnities exacted from the captured countries, with
gold and silver seized, turned the propertied classes of Rome from men of
means to persons of opulence so that reckless luxury resulted. It was a time
of the rise and prominence of women, sexuality, and licentiousness.

In 144 B.C. another Agrarian Revolt broke out as a result of four factors:

1. The import of grain from abroad reducing the domestic price
2. The growth of large farms, as mentioned above

3. The influx of slaves for farm labor, which led to

4. The migration of the small farmer to the city

This revolution raged for 73 years and gradually passed into an actual civil
war at the end of the century. Related were revolts of slaves on Sicilian
plantations in 135 and 103 B.C. (Ref. 222) Finley (Ref. 249) writes that "--
there was no action or belief or institution in Greco-Roman antiquity that
was not one way or other affected by the possibility that someone involved
might be a slave"[footnote]. Millions of slave owners bought and sold
slaves, overworked them, beat and tortured them and sometimes killed
them, without legal retribution.

Reference 249, page 65

Other troubles also developed with the invasion in the north by two Celtic
tribes, the Cimbri and the Teutones, who defeated Roman armies as they
rolled on down through Gaul. In addition the Numidians in North Africa
turned on them and attacked under the Leadership of Jugurtha, as we have
detailed in section 1, B of this chapter.

Originally Roman medicine had been inherited from the Etruscans and was
based chiefly on religious healing, but Greek medicine gradually infiltrated
from Alexandria. The first well known Greek physician to go to Rome was
Archagathos of Sparta who had arrived with much celebration and honor
just before this century opened, but who was later repudiated and called
"butcher". (Ref. 125, 249)

CENTRAL EUROPE

The Germanic or Teutonic tribes now began to dominate central Europe.
They were fair-haired like the Celts, but taller. By 150 B.C. the pressure of
these tribes in the north and the Romans in the south had begun to tip the
military balance against the Celts and their culture started to disappear in
central Europe except in the kingdom of Noricum (present day southern
Austria) from which the Romans had been forced to with- draw, and
Switzerland. By the end of the century the Romans had pretty well
reconquered these areas also.

WESTERN EUROPE

The Celtic peoples were now concentrated all along the Atlantic states. We
insert at this time a few remarks about the Celtic religion, since the only
source of inf ormation has been from the Roman records as they conf ronted
the Celts in Gaul. Throughout all their tribes, the Celts had a priestly caste
of Druids, although each group seemed to have its own local dieties and
cults. The Druids were teachers of the young nobility and they forecasted
the future. Once a year, Druid priests from all over met in solemn assembly
near Chartres, France. They mediated disputes between tribes and enforced

their judgments by excommunication or exclusion from the sacrifices,
which seemed central to this religion.

The sacrifices included humans, of ten criminals or prisoners of war, and
they were of ten burned in a sea of flames. (Ref. 194) The suggestion has
been made that the astronomical knowledge and the basic cult of the Druids
may have been passed to them from prehistoric peoples in England.

The Germanic tribes continued raids into western continental Europe,
pushing the Celts into more and more rather narrow bands along the
Atlantic and into the British Isles. The Cimbers and the Teutons had left
Jutland and Schleswig-Holstein about 120 B.C., migrated into Gaul,
defeating several Roman armies and spreading fear and terror. The two
tribes finally separated, however, and were then defeated by the Roman
Marius, in 102 B.C. The Cimbrians met their defeat at Aqua Sextia and the
Teutons at Vercellae. But the Cimbri had already sent forces into Spain
from Germany and in Portugal the Lusitanian tribes, led by Viriathus,
defeated all Roman armies for eight years before they finally fell as their
leader was assassinated. In Gaul, Rome had to fight "barbarians" all along
the Rhone River to protect Massilia, and by 120 B.C. they had organized
southern Gaul into a separate Roman province. (Ref. 8, 196)

What appear to be Phoenician beads have been excavated near St. Sampson,
Cornwall, dating from the 2nd century B.C. on, seeming to confirm the
presence of the Carthaginians there as traders for tin. (Ref. 66) In Scotland
the fusion of Picts, Celts, Norwegians and Bell-Beaker people continued,
with the Picts probably the dominant group, although accepting some Celtic
speech. (Ref. 170)

SCANDINAVIA

The Germanic tribes spread all through Scandinavia moving up across the
Skaggerak and Kattegot into Norway and even northern Sweden. Many of
the tribes seem to have originated, or at least made their preliminary
proliferations, in the Denmark area. This period appears to have been the
first of some recurring times of tremendous population growth in southern

Scandinavia with the resulting necessity for migration of multitudes of
people from the area.

EASTERN EUROPE

An Iranian tribe, the Sarmatians, had conquered and gradually displaced
almost all the Scythians, although a few of the latter remained east of the
Caspian Sea. After the Sarmatians had extended all across the whole of the
Russian steppe they, in the second half of the century, divided into three
groups:

1. Iazygians, west of the lower Dneiper
2. Roxolani, between the Dneiper and the Don, and
3. Alans, to the east and just north of the Caspian (Ref. 136)

Greek colonies around the Black Sea fell into decay and the Kingdom of
Pontus, under Mithridates IV, took control of most of the Black Sea shore,
including the Crimea. In the upper Dneiper basin, the northward advance of
the Dneiper Slavs began to result in the ejection or absorption of the Balts
in the area.

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SOUTHERN EUROPE

EASTERN MEDITERRANEAN ISLANDS

This was the century when Rome gained control of most of the
Mediterranean. Augustus took the Cyclades and conquered Crete in 68 - 67
B.C. and Cyprus in 58. Rhodes was already under Roman jurisdiction. (Ref.
38)

GREECE

Greece became a battle ground for several different campaigns including
the First Mithridatic War when the Pontus king was stopped only after he
had gotten well down into this peninsula. Athens, which had allied itself
with Mithridates, had its prosperity come to an end when it was sacked by
the troops of the Roman Sulla in 87 and 86 B.C.. After the sea battle of
Actium of 31 B.C. in which Antony and Cleopatra lost to Octavian, Rome
legally as well as effectively held the whole of Alexander's heritage in this
land and Greece began a reign of peace as an integral part of the Roman
Empire. The island of Delos had now become the center of the Athenian
world and served as the greatest trading center for slaves in the civilized
world.

UPPER BALKANS

The basic population of this area remained Celtic and as a frontier of the
Roman Empire it served as a battle ground for the Roman-Celtic conflicts,
as well as part of the First Mithridatic War. The southern Illyrians were
finally conquered by the Roman Augustus between 35 and 34 B.C. The
Kingdom of Thrace remained intact and north of this the large Dacian
Kingdom also kept its independence in the area of Romania. The Greeks
called these people "Getas".

ITALY

As the century opened there was still some indecision as to the actual scope
and power of Rome over the remainder of the Italian peninsula. In 91 B.C.
there was one final war between Rome and her neighbors over the idea of a
united Italy and the scope of the rule of the Roman Senate. It ended by the
practical surrender of the Senate to the concept of reform which allowed
thereafter all Italians to become Roman citizens by decree. The classical
Latin language emerged about 100 B.C. af ter some imprints from the
languages of Asia Minor, the Balkans and Greece and this classical tongue
then held sway for about 300 years.

On the government scene, while Sulla was in Asia Minor and the Balkans,
the consuls Cinna and Marius had instituted a reign of terror, dissolved the
Senate and ruled with "iron hands" until Marius' death. When Sulla returned
he made himself a dictator and while restoring law and order and the Senate
to power, he desolated large parts of Italy, executing over 5,000 people. He
tried to establish a permanently aristocratic constitution but this was
followed by all sorts of complications. Among these was the revolt of the
slaves under Spartacus in 73 B.C., just after Sulla's death. The slaves held
out in southern Italy, using Vesuvius' crater for a time as a fortress but when
they were at last captured after two years by Crassus and Pompey some
6,000 were crucified along the Appian way. The two generals, former
cronies of Sulla, had risen to power through separate and originally
conflicting ways. Gnaeus Pompeius, after prevailing upon Sulla to give him
the title of Magnus (The Great), won prominence by subduing the traitor
Quintus Sertorius, who as a governor of Spain had attempted to set up a
separatist regime of his own in that province. Crassus, in addition to his

victory over the slaves, had made himself fabulously wealthy through
various and sundry unscrupulous deals and now the two men united to
undue Sulla's constitution and had themselves elected consuls in 70 B.C.
This was the era of Marcus Tullius Cicero, a lawyer who had as his fondest
desire to be accepted into the inner circle of the Senatorial class and his
whole career was geared to that aim. By prosecuting one of the corrupt
provincial governors Cicero gained a praetorship and a rise to power.
Meanwhile Pompey gained still more esteem by conquering the Cilician
and Cretan pirates who had been preventing normal sea commerce in the
Mediterranean and disrupting the great slave emporium at Delos. Soon,
therefore, with Cicero's help, Pompey was given absolute power over both
land and sea forces through the entire empire. It was then that he went to
reorganize the entire Near East. When he returned after several years
involvement in the Mithridatic wars, organizing Asia Minor and Syria and
conquering Jerusalem he allegedly brought back some two million slaves.
(Ref. 213)

Gaius Julius Caesar was the youngest ruler of the late Republic. By 58 B.C.
he had been a high priest, staff officer, finance minister, military governor,
senator and consul. He had married three times, had countless love-affairs,
led campaigns and been involved in various intrigues [footnote]. As he
ascended the ladder of political power his offices entailed enormous
expenses and this got him involved with the multi-millionaire, Crassus,
from whom he had to borrow large sums of money. After a period as
governor of Spain, Caesar returned to Rome to join the power group of
Crassus and Pompey.

These remarks about Caesar were taken almost verbatim from Herm (Ref.
91), page 164

Although meeting some opposition in the Senate led by Cato the Younger, a
follower of Greek ideals and standing for an honest financial policy in
government, Caesar, Crassus and Pompey formed an extra-legal coalition
called "the First Triumvirate". Each soon went his separate way, however,
with Caesar conducting his victorious campaigns in Gaul[footnote],
Germany and Britain, then returning to take control of Rome, over
Pompey's objections. This was followed by a victorious trip to the Middle
East in Syria and Egypt. When Caesar then returned to Rome there was

great inflation and the "annona", or free grain distribution from the public
granaries was excessive. Even by 71 B.C. some 40,000 adult male citizens
had been receiving free grain, and in the next decades it increased greatly so
that Caesar thought he did well to cut back to 150,000 free-loaders.

The reader will find some interesting material regarding the difficulties of
Caesar's conquests of the Gauls under the heading of WESTERN EUROPE,
in this same chapter

Meanwhile Crassus had obtained command of the eastern forces and
prepared to emulate the glories of Lucullus and Pompey in Asia Minor and
Armenia, but Crassus ran into the Parthians. These fierce Iranians, perhaps
with Turanian Mongolian mercenaries, killed 20,000 Roman soldiers along
with Crassus and captured 10,000 more at the Battle of Carrhae (53 B.C.) in
Syria. The hold of the Romans on Mesopotamia was never very secure.

After Crassus' death Caesar and Pompey faced each other as antagonists
and as the months went by definite lines of battle and forces were drawn up
and actual civil war followed. Caesar soon won control of all Italy and
gained Sardinia, Sicily and North Africa. After defeating Pompey's forces at
Ilerda in Spain he returned to Rome to be made dictator. Pompey fled to the
east where he built up a loyal military establishment but all for naught as
Caesar caught up to him in Thessaly in 48 B.C. and defeated him. Pompey
fled to Egypt only to be assassinated by the teen-aged Ptolemy XIII. After
having been made dictator "for life" by the Senate in 45 B.C., Caesar was
assassinated by "friends" to whom his divine aspirations were intolerable.
The extent of the Roman Republic at the death of Caesar is shown in the
map below.

NOTE: Insert Map 28: THE ROMAN REPUBLIC AT THE DEATH OF
CAESAR

Marc Antony, who had shared a consulship with Caesar, considered himself
the sole heir of Caesar and he, with the latter's nephew, Gaius Julius Caesar
Octavianus (later Octavian) and Marcus Aemilius Lepidus, who had
followed Sulla as consul, all together formed the Second Triumvirate.
Publicly the purpose of this association was to avenge the death of Caesar
but actually it merely set up power bases for Antony and Octavian.
Inevitably they could not abide each other and the quarrels terminated with

the Battle of Actium off the Greek coast in 31 B.C. with Octavian winning
and subsequently ruling alone as emperor, called Augustus. The people
accepted his dictatorship because they had been faring so poorly under the
previous senatorial oligarchy. A reign of peace, another "Golden Age",
resulted.

Before this time the Romans had raised armies only for specific tasks,
disbanding them after the mission was accomplished, but Augustus created
a standing army of 25 legions with the equivalent of another, the Praetorian
Guard, in Italy as his personal protection. Of the others, 8 legions were
stationed along the Rhine, 3 along the Danube in the Balkan area, 4 in the
Yugoslav territory, 4 in Syria and Lebanon, 2 each in Egypt and Portugal,
and one each in northern Spain and Carthage. Each legion contained 5,000
men divided into 10 cohorts of 480 each.

In spite of the "Golden Age", the relief roles had again built up in Rome to
320,000 so that just under one-third of the population had to receive free
government grain to exist. It took some 14 million bushels of grain each
year just to supply the city itself where 1,500,000 citizens lived, housed in
some 46,600 insulae (apartment blocks) three to eight stories high, made of
wood, rubble and brick. Windows were simply wall openings and were
covered with shutters or hangings. Only the rich had wells or taps into the
city conduits; the rest got water from public fountains. There were public
lavatories and toilet receptacles which were frequently emptied into the
street. Menial work was done by about 2,000,000 slaves, a middle class
citizen owning about eight while the rich might have up to one thousand
and an emperor twenty thousand. Slaves made up 35% of the population of
Italy. (Ref. 249) Livy stated that it was common for Roman orators to state
that "--Jews, Syrians, Lydians, Medes, indeed all Asiatics are born to
slavery"|footnote] Horses were of little use as a source of energy in this
Roman period as they were badly harnessed with the yoke tending to
throttle them and they could draw only a light load. Four slaves could do as
much. Engineers did manage to change water wheels to the vertical position
and add gears which greatly increased their efficiency for turning mill-
stones. (Ref. 260)

As quoted by Finley (Ref. 249), page 119.

NOTE: INSERT Map 30: ROME 100 B.C.

Hellenic culture continued to pour into Rome and literature and art took
new dignity.Cicero, Catullus, Virgil, Horace and Livius the historian, all
translated and adjusted Greek learning to the Latin tongue. A great
philosophical poem, giving the views of Democritus and Epicurus was
written by Lucretius, the Roman Epicurean, during this century. The
wealthy hired Greek nurses and teachers for their children. The Roman
physicians of this period were chiefly Greeks or at least Greek-trained.
Asclepiades, originally of Bithynia, developed a high reputation as a
physician and was a friend of Cicero and Lucretius. He abandoned the old
Hippocrates doctrine of the four humors and felt that the physician, not
nature, cured disease. Most Roman practitioners were either freedmen or

Lucius Licinium Lucullus, one of the Roman generals in the Third
Mithridatic War, is credited with bringing the cherry into Europe from the -
shores of the Black Sea. Every Roman (as well as every Greek) had his
beehives, as honey was the only sweetening common in the West. Indian
Cane Sugar was more expensive and the raw cane was actually less tasty
than honey, so there was no attempt to import it, except for medicinal
purposes. (Ref. 48, 122)

CENTRAL EUROPE

GERMANY

There was now a predominance of Germanic tribes in the area of present
day Germany and Caesar and the Romans never actually penetrated that
area although Roman merchants and traders did appear with goods to trade
for furs and slaves. As the Germanic tribes came south their first encounters
were with Celts, but whether much fighting was involved or not is
unknown. Actually the Germans were very little different from the Celts;
their religions and their languages had common origins. The Romans said

the Germans were rather blonder, but otherwise little physical distinction
was made.

Drusus conquered the Bavarian region for Rome from the Celts in 15 B.C.
and Rhaetia, which included parts of southern Bavaria along with the Tyrol
and east Switzerland, was established as a Roman province late in the
century.

AUSTRIA AND HUNGARY

Having conquered the Celtic Cimbri and Teutones coming down at the edge
of Italy and Austria, the Romans now squeezed the Celts out of Austria and
consolidated their authority along the Danube clear to Budapest. Some of
eastern present day Hungary appeared to be a part of the Kingdom of Dacia,
which held out against Roman control for another century.

CZECHOSLOVAKIA

The Celtic Boii people, for whom Bohemia was named were driven out of
Bohemia at this time by the Germanic tribes descending from the north.

SWITZERLAND

As noted above east Switzerland was included in the Roman province of
Rhaetia. The crowded Helvetii around Lake Neuchatel began a migration
westward with cattle and wagons, leaving 400 villages and thousands of
homesteads. Fearing a threat to her Mediterranean coastal province, Rome
sent Caesar north to intercept the Helvetii and this he did as they poured
through a gorge leaving the Lake Geneva area. Of 368,000 Helvetii, only
110,000 got back to Switzerland as the Romans retained control of the area.
(Ref. 194)

WESTERN EUROPE

SPAIN AND PORTUGAL

Both of these areas continued as part of the Roman Empire. It has been
noted under ITALY above that Julius Caesar was sent to Spain in 59 B.C. to
suppress the guerrilla warfare and he did get some help from local groups.
It was still later, however, after he had been given Gaul in the First
Triumvirate that he became locked in a power struggle with Pompey and
returned to Spain, defeating Pompey's son in the great battle of Munda near
Cordoba in 45 B.C., thereby gaining mastery of the world. The Iberians
then adopted the Roman language and culture. (Ref. 196)

FRANCE AND NETHERLANDS & BELGIUM

Gaul (France) was still essentially Celtic and Caesar's conquests began the
Latinization of the country and helped to contain the Teutonic people to the
east of the Rhine. The curly-headed Parisii, a Celtic tribe consisting of
fishermen and navigators, settled a five acre Ile de la Cete in the river which
is now in the center of Paris. The Batave Germanic tribe settled in the Rhine
delta, now known as the Netherlands about 14 B.C. and they and the
Frisians became the ancestors of the modern Dutch. (Ref. 175)

After Julius Caesar massacred the Swiss, as noted in a paragraph above, he
proceeded in the next eight years to "pacify" all of Gaul, taking some eight
hundred towns and killing, by his own count, 1,292,000 men, women and
children. He may have enslaved nearly another 2,000,000. In 55 B.C.
Caesar experienced and described the greatest naval battle that he had ever
been called upon to mount[footnote]. His opponents were the Celts of
Brittany and their allies from Britain, who had no less than 220 ships, all
larger than and superior in construction to those of the Romans under
Admiral Rutus. These vessels, which towered over the Roman galleys, had
the capability of crossing the Atlantic (Barry Fell's concept) and were
apparently under the leadership of the Veneti of Armorica with their allies,
the Curiosolites, the Venelli of the Channell Islands and Cherbourg, the

Namnetes and Lexovii of Normandy. The high-bowed, graceful ships
propelled by the wind were only defeated when the Romans hurled falces
into the rigging of the Celtic vessels, then rowing away, tearing out the
rigging. Then grappling irons were thrown and the 200 men in each trireme
would board the Celtic vessel and in hand-to-hand combat they finally won.
(Ref. 194, 65)

According to Barry Fell in America B.C. (Ref. 65), Caesar described this
sea battle in "De Bello Gallico"

NOTE: Insert Map 27: GAUL IN CAESAR'S TIME

On land it required a great engineering feat for Caesar's legions to breach
the "murus galliciul", a box-like grid of timbers filled with rubble and stone
that surrounded the Celt town of Avaricum (present Bourges, in the center
of France) and then slaughter the 40,000 people within. The Gauls at last
rallied behind a young chief, Vercingetorix, who first had his people burn
their fields and towns as they retreated so that the Roman troops could not
live off the land, and then he initiated guerrilla warfare to cut off new
supplies to the Roman troops. Vercingetorix was finally cornered in the hills
of eastern, central France behind some fortifications. Caesar further
surrounded these with nine and a half miles of fortifications of his own to
try and contain the Celtic chieftain. Even then Vercingetorix slipped out
some cavalry by night and had them gather an additional quarter of a
million Gauls from some forty different tribes. In the interim Caesar had
built still another circle of fortifications fourteen miles in circumference,
facing outward to meet the Gallic reinforcements. For days the battles
raged, with the methodical butchery of the 40,000 legionnaires of Rome
finally prevailing. Vercingetorix emerged alone from the fort of Alesia,
surrendered and was taken prisoner to Rome where he was paraded through
the Forum and finally strangled to death some six years later. Caesar
allegedly obtained enough slaves after Alesia to give one to each of his
legionaires. The course of Gallic civilization was all down-hill from this
time on. (Ref. 194, 91, 213)

BRITISH ISLES

The Belgic tribes were the last of the successive waves of Celts into Britain.
They were a people of chariots and horses who introduced a coinage of
silver and copper and established themselves as a tribal aristocracy. The
Belgic capital was Colchester. The most ancient lettering known in Britain
is to be found on the Belgic coins. This tribe seems to have been a mixture
of Celtic and Teutonic origin from the region of the lower Rhine. Their new
country produced corn, cattle, gold, silver, iron, hides, slaves and hunting
dogs. Caesar crossed the channel starting at midnight August 26, 55 B.C.
with 80 transports for his legions, experiencing considerable trouble in so
doing, with the loss of some ships and men. He won a few victories over the
Belgae under their leader, Cassivellaunus, but hastily departed England
before winter set in. (Ref. 43, 91)

Scotland and Ireland were probably not yet involved in these new invasions
and remained essentially as in the last century.

SCANDINAVIA

According to Tacitus, writing about A.D. 100, Sweden in the first century
B.C. was dominated by the Suione Teutonic tribe. Scandinavia was never
entered by the Romans, although trade was carried on with Danish amber,
fur and various slaves exchanged for several Roman products, including
wines and some iron objects.

EASTERN EUROPE

In this and the past century the Germanic Goths had appeared around
Sweden and the Baltic Sea and started migration down into northeastern
Germany. Just to the east of them were the Finno-Ugric speaking Estonians
and just south of them in the Polish area and extending into middle Russia
were Slavs. In southern Russia the Sarmatians were in the ascendancy and
they spread out well to the east to the Caspian.

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An interesting bit of trivia is that while fermented drinks had been known
and used by mankind for thousands of years, the process of distilling was
discovered only in this first century of the Christian era. The Gaelic uisge
beatha was corrupted to "whiskey" and the Germanic Gebrannterwein or
Brandewin meaning "burnt wine" was eventually Anglicized to "brandy".
(Ref. 211)

SOUTHERN EUROPE

EASTERN MEDITERRANEAN ISLANDS

A part of the Roman Empire.

GREECE

The city-states of Greece continued to govern themselves although
theoretically they were under Roman rule. They were poor by virtue of
Roman taxation and were almost destitute morally, spiritually and
physically. This was the-time of Plutarch and of Epictetus, the slave
philosopher who combined the concepts of the Stoics and Cynics into many
ideas paralleling the attitudes of early Christianity, including the Golden
Rule. Thus Stoicism, originally the proud and scornful philosophy of
aristocrats, found its final and most eloquent voice in a slave. Its doctrine of
a final conflagration of the world, its rejection of all pleasures of the flesh,
its humble surrender to the hidden will of God, all were preparing for the
theology and ethics of Christianity. The age of the Cyrics paved the way for
the Christian monks.

Corinth became the wealthiest city of Greece while Athens remained an
intellectual center. Eleusis, across the Aegean Sea, became a religious
center of sacraments and "mysteries". (Ref. 48)

UPPER BALKANS

The Roman province of Pannonia, the most southern portion of which
comprises present day Yugoslavia, was established in A.D. 9 after defeat of
the native Illyrians.

Moesia, which had never been penetrated by Grecian influence, was
organized as a province in A.D. 44. The upper Balkans now showed
increased activities of all kinds. There was considerable agriculture, mining
and herding, as well as commerce with Asia through the port of Salonika in
Macedonia. Great cities were built and roads constructed, such as the Via
Egnatia, that ran across the Albanian alps to Salonika and Constantinople.
In Dacia (Romania) there was a strong tribe of the same name who were
never subdued by the Romans in this century. In A.D. 85 they surged out
across the Danube into Moesia (now Serbia and part of Bulgaria) but were
pushed back by Domitian. The Romans could go no further, however, as the
Marcomanni and Quadi, who had occupied Bohemia west of Dacia, joined
the fray and defeated Domitian. A peace was signed with the Dacian king,
Decebalus, and he subsequently turned on the Germanic tribes and defeated
them. Iazygians were also squeezing in between Quadi and Dacians and
Roxolani were approaching Dacia from the east. In the area that they did
control, the Romans found Thracians useful as soldiers, slaves and
especially as gladiators. (Ref. 206, 48, 136, 171)

ITALY

This was a century of some great and some lesser emperors of Rome in
what has been called the "Silver Age" to indicate that it was not quite as
good as the previous "Golden Age" under Octavian. The Julio-Claudian
Dynasty continued under TIBERIUS Claudius Nero who reformed the
government and law, advanced construction of public works, elevated the

legal status of the provinces and re-subdued and Romanized Gaul and
Britain. Tiberius' reign had been saved from any serious Parthian threat
because of dynastic quarrels within Parthia. In A.D. 37 when Tiberius was
dying he indicated as his successors his young grandson Tiberius Gemellus
and the surviving son of Germanicus, Gauius Caesar Germanicus. The latter
soon put the former to death and ruled alone as "CALIGULA", a probably
insane, megalomaniac given to excesses and obscenities of all kinds. He
was assassinated in 41 and Tiberius CLAUDIUS Drusus became emperor.
His four wives were his undoing but he actually was a fairly able man and
instituted some definite administrative improvements.

He was followed by Nero who began his reign well under the guidance of
Seneca, but in spirit he was an actor and had to play the monarch in the
grand manner. He was recklessly cruel to the aristocrats, but generous to the
poor, with the possible exception of the new Christians who were first
persecuted about A.D. 64, when Rome was burned.

Thereafter followed the Flavian Dynasty. Vespasian was a man of sense,
ability and honor who directed the war against Judea and established the
first system of state education. The last of this line was Domitian (A.D. 81 -
96) who managed the flourishing empire well during a great age of
construction. At the end, however, like many others, he became very cruel,
deified himself, indulged in sexual discrepancies and became paranoid
about possible conspiracies against him. Throughout this age there was a
decay of the native religion in Rome and the multiple gods of Jove, Mars,
Mercury, Jupiter and others began to give way to the Stoic philosophy. (See
GREECE, above)

We should mention some of the non-political figures of this century. Seneca
was born in Spain in 4 B.C. and became a copious writer, tutor to and later
financial backer to Nero. Pliny the Elder (A.D. 23 - 79) was a great mind of
the day, but his book Natural History with dissertations on humans,
animals, metals, chemistry, medicine and astronomy, was actually a
monument to Roman ignorance. He also compiled an encyclopedia citing
150 Roman and 400 Greek scholars, before he was killed in the eruption of
the volcano Vesuvius in A.D. 79. Of interest also is De Materia Medica by
a-Greek botanist, Pedanios Dioscorides, who had served as a military

surgeon in Nero's army. He detailed the properties of some 600 medicinal
plants in this text, which remained an authoritative guide for 1,500 years.
(Ref. 222) At about the same time a patrician layman, Celsus, tried to
summarize all knowledge. Only eight of his many books have survived, the
De Medicina, and even these were lost for centuries. (Ref. 125)

As noted above it was in the year 79 that Mt. Vesuvius on the Bay of Naples
erupted after 16 years of violent surrounding earthquakes. The cities of
Heraculaneum and Pompeii were buried and thousands were killed. At 95 a
severe form of malaria appeared in the farming areas surrounding Rome
and became endemic there for the next 500 years. At that time ten
aqueducts supplied Rome with 250 million gallons of water per day. (Ref.
125, 222)

Throughout this century Roman legions continued to probe the frontiers in
Gaul and in the east, gradually extending the empire boundaries. Comments
about some of the battles will be found in the paragraphs concerning the
regions involved. The population of the Roman Empire at this time was
about 54 million, while that of Han China was an estimated 57,600,000.
Rome now began to break the Arab monopoly on spices from the east by
building ships large enough to sail from the Egyptian Sea to India. The
journey was still hazardous and at one time pepper cost $125,000 per 12
ounces. As the secret of the changing monsoon winds in the Indian Ocean
was solved, however, pepper became cheaper. Gold was taken to Malabar to
be exchanged for pepper. Pliny wrote that Roman ships of this period sailed
from the mouth of the Ganges to Ceylon in seven days. The sailing ships
were up to 420 feet long with 50 foot beams. One commercial ship had
room for 200 sailors, 1,300 passengers and 93,000 bushels of wheat. Wines
made from the very prolific Italian vines were now generally preferred to

Additional Notes

CENTRAL EUROPE

GERMANY

In this century there were three to four million people living in the area of
modern Germany with three main divisions of the Germanic tribes; The
eastern Germans on the Oder and Vistula who were the Visigoths,
Ostrogoths, Burgundians and Vandals; the northern Germans of the
southern part of Scandinavia, the Baltic islands and Jutland; and the western
ones between the Elbe, the North Sea, the Rhine and the Main. The last
group preserved their ancient Germanic traits and are the present day
Germans, Dutch, Flemings, Anglo-Saxons and, in part, the French.

The early Germanic peoples lived simply, eating horse meat and living in
log houses. They were monogamous and held slaves. Super-individual
motivations such as patriotism or religious idealism were strangely lacking
as these people were highly personalistic. The boundary line between the
Roman Empire and the Germanic lands became fairly well established at
the Rhine, but battles raged back and forth from time to time. Domitian
crossed the Rhine at Mainz to campaign against the Chatti and early
victories allowed him to construct a series of forts which were later
extended along the central Rhine and then across to the upper Danube.
Where this joined an older line of forts on the Danube part of this
fortification line became known as "the limes”.

AUSTRIA AND HUNGARY

The Emperor Tiberius started as early as A.D. 25 to strengthen the frontier
forts of the Danube limes to keep out the northern barbarian hordes.
Vindobona (Vienna) was one of three important military bases of the
Danube Valley and watch towers were erected all along the river and boats
were on constant patrol. At the end of the century there was a completely
fortified military road from the Boden See (Lake Constantine) to the
Danube limes. The southern portion of what is now Austria and Hungary,
along with the western Balkans, was included in the Roman province of
Pannonia.

CZECHOSLAVAKIA

As we noted earlier, the Marcomanni and Quadi Germanic tribes had
occupied the area of Bohemia and then went south to help the Dacians
defeat Domitian, slowing down the Roman advance in this area. The
Dacians then turned on the Germans, however, and drove them from the
territory.

SWITZERLAND

All under Roman control.

WESTERN EUROPE

SPAIN AND PORTUGAL

All of this area also was Roman controlled. In addition to slaves, there were
several groups of free men in Roman Spain - land holding aristocrats, a
middle class of merchants, professional people and bureaucrats, manual
workers, soldiers and smiths. The Seneca family of Rome had originally
come from Cordoba. (Ref. 196)

FRANCE

The Gauls of France progressively reached higher levels of culture and
were enfranchised as a province of the Roman Empire. Thomas (Ref. 213)
says that about A.D. 100 the Celts invented the metal-hooped, wooden
barrel which changed the wine industry greatly since the drink could be
stored much better in barrels than in emphorae. He does not say which
Celtic group made this progress, but we know that advances in the Gaulic
wine industry offered such a challenge to the Italian vineyards that
Domitian ordered half the vines in the Rhone region uprooted.

THE NETHERLANDS AND BELGIUM

The Batavi of the Netherlands were allied with the Romans until A.D. 70
when a chieftain called Civilis revolted, building a line of forts along the
southern bank of the Rhine to mark off his own empire. The Frisians stayed
in the north in a "no-man's land". (Ref. 175)

BRITISH ISLES

Rome conquered Britain in this century but it was not easy. It took about
four decades to completely Romanize England after the A.D. 43 invasion
by the army of Claudius, using four Roman legions (out of 29 in the entire
empire), each legion containing about 5,600 men. (Ref. 18) Boadicea (or
Boudicca), a widowed queen of the Iceni tribe became a famous heroine by
leading her tribe against the Romans in East Anglia as she moved against
various Romanized towns in A.D. 61 and massacred all, a total of about
70,000 people, including 30,000 to 40,000 in London alone. She was finally
defeated in a terrible battle by Suetonius, who had only 10,000 fully armed
men against some 80,000 Britons, but these included women and children.
Emperor Claudius finally managed to have eleven British kings surrender to
him at Colchester.

At this period the Celtic Britons still followed their Druid philosophers in a
religion that apparently involved human sacrifices. The Celts had three
groups of learned men:

1. Bards, who composed and preserved poetry and music

2. Vates, who were priests responsible for carrying out sacrifices to the
gods

3. Druids, who studied natural science and philosophy

Myles Dillon, who was a professor of Celtic at the University of Dublin,
contended that the Druids should be likened to the Brahmins in India, since
they carried out their professions including teaching, study, poetry and law
in a similar way|footnote] Julius Caesar wrote that the Celtic Druids had
knowledge of the stars, the universe, the dimensions of the earth and other

related matters. Standing stones in linear or circular groupings serving as
astronomical markings are found in all Celtic lands. (Ref. 65)
As related by Herm (Ref. 91), page 146.

Perhaps it was in this century that the Picts finally grouped themselves in
two dominant tribes; one in the north to be called in the next century
"Caledonii" by the Romans, and secondly a southern tribe of the south, later
called "Maeatae". The Roman historian, Tacitus, says that in this century
the Romans fought a great battle of Mons Grampius[footnote] against
heavy legged, tall, red-haired men who fought savagely with long swords
and round shields, led by a man called "Calgacus, the Swordsman"
[footnote] .

Mountains of central Scotland.

As recorded by Prebble (Ref. 170), page 1.

Early Celtic Ireland had not writing until the 4th century C.E., and the early
history that descended orally through the centuries contains so much myth
and legend in the sagas that it is difficult to separate fact from fiction.
Apparently in old Celtic fashion, young men of upper class were considered
to be men at 16 or 17, in essence "knights", and they had to demonstrate
their maturity by raiding enemy territory for cattle and human heads. It is
said that the men of Ulster did not keep the skulls of victims as trophies but
only their brains, formed into little balls with gypsum. The men liked to sit,
eat and drink together in large banquet halls, with the women looking on
from a balcony above. Ireland had five main areas, each called a "fifth"-
Ulster in the north, Munster in the south, Con- naught in between on the
Atlantic side and Mide and Leinster on the east side. (Ref. 91)

Prince Caradoc, called "Caractus" by the Romans, was a Welsh leader who
was not defeated until A.D. 50 after he was betrayed by Queen Cartimandus
of the Brigantes (Ref. 18) and he was taken prisoner to Rome. In Wales, the
Romans put in roads and worked copper and gold mines, but they could not
pacify the Welsh who were not actually considered won for Rome until
A.D. 78.

SCANDINAVIA

There was a proliferation of various Germanic tribes throughout Norway
and Denmark. The Swedish peninsula was dominated by the Suione tribe,
while the island of Gotland and other Baltic islands were probably inhabited
chiefly by Goths. Snorre Sturlasson, a learned Icelandic scribe, described
the origin and ancestral home of the Scandinavian kings as on the border
between Europe and Asia along the eastern shores of the Black Sea.

This work has been translated by Holtsmark and Seip[footnote] Snorre
gives a detailed, geographical account of the early migration through
Europe, passing from Saxony into Denmark, Sweden and Norway, having
been chased out of the Caucasus by the ravaging Roman armies and led by
the Viking King Odin. Snorre named thirty kings before reaching the
generation of Harold Fairhair, of which we shall hear more later in the 9th
century.

Taken from Thor Heyerdahl (Ref. 118), page 127.

Rich Stone Age finds show that from prehistoric times the Finnish
peninsula has been the meeting place of peoples from Russia, Scandinavia
and central Europe. Ancient Lapp and Nordic stocks went north, as Finno-
Ugrian speaking peoples came in from the east.

In the century under consideration there were three groups of people: The
Karelians, who were a dark, short, brachycephalic people entering from the
southeast; the Tavastians, with high cheek-bones coming across the Gulf of
Finland; and the Finns, proper, from the southern shore of the Gulf of
Finland. (Ref. 95, 61) All of these northern people were probably excellent
seamen. A forty-two foot, slender, rowing canoe has been found in
Denmark dating to this century.

EASTERN EUROPE

BALTIC AREA

Estonians had already settled on the southern Baltic coast, while Goths
inhabited the Baltic islands and perhaps some of the south shore,

particularly in the Vistula River basin of Poland. Eastward were the Balts
(Letts), who eventually became the Latvians, Lithuanians and the now
extinct Old Prussians. The language was an individual, separate Indo-
European group entity, neither Germanic nor Slavic. The Roman Tacitus,
writing in this century, called the Estonians the "Aesti". (Ref. 48, 175)

RUSSIA

Most of Russia was still sparsely inhabited but in the central, western part
were chiefly Slavs and farther east and south there were Huns. In the
Caucasus a new Sarmatian people, the Alans, may have been pushed there
by the western expansion of the Kushans, whom we have met in Central
Asia. These Alans, in turn, pushed the westward lying lazygians entirely out
of Russia into the Theiss plain of modern Hungary and Yugoslavia. (Ref.
136)

Note:The Bay of Naples was a beautiful resort area with palatial summer
villas for the emperors and other high officials. Because of the severe
geological instability of the region, however, earthquakes and adjacent
volcanoes have subsequently resulted in a sinking of the land and marked
shifting of the city of Naples. (Ref. 281)

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EUROPE

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SOUTHERN EUROPE

EASTERN MEDITERRANEAN ISLANDS

Part of the Roman Empire.

GREECE

The home place of the Hellenic world enjoyed an "Indian summer" which
was mistaken for a "Golden Age". A thousand city-states lived peacefully
together but an impalpable censorship from the Roman overseers was
already slowly eliminating intellectual and artistic vitality. At the end of the
century the Germanic Costobii raided down through Greece to within 14
miles of Athens. (Ref. 48)

UPPER BALKANS

Almost all of the present day Balkans belonged to the Roman Empire,
including Dacia or Romania, Moesia or Bulgaria, Thracia and Dalmatia. The
very northern portions of Romania and Bulgaria may have been outside the
Roman jurisdiction, in the large area known then as Sarmatia and extending
over into Russia on the north shore of the Black Sea. In the upper Balkan
area, however, only Romania can be said to have been truly Latinized.

ITALY

The first half of the century, under Emperors Trajan and Hadrian and their
immediate successors, was one of the great periods of the empire, with
general prosperity and with limited exceptions, such as the Romano-Jewish
Wars and Armenian squabbles, a period of peace. The Mediterranean world
had a fullness of life not seen before or since. The Greek spirit ruled the
mind and the East, while the Roman spirit ruled the state and the West.
Under Trajan the empire reached its greatest geographical extent, as
indicated on the map and in the summary of the empire at A.D. 117 to
follow.

1. AFRICA. All of Egypt and the north African coast, including
Mauretania, Syrtica and Marmarica.

2. THE NEAR EAST. A portion of Arabia, all of the eastern
Mediterranean coast, all of Syria, Iraq, Media in Persia, Asia Minor,
including Bithynia, Pontus and Cappadocia, Cilicia, Lycaonia, Gallatia
and Armenia.

3. EUROPE

1. SOUTHERN EUROPE. Greece and most of the Balkan area,
including Dacia (Romania), Moesia (Bulgaria), Thracia and
Dalmatia (southern Bulgaria, European Turkey, Yugoslavia and
Croatia), and all of Italy and Sicily.

2.B. CENTRAL EUROPE. The Austrian-Hungary area, known
then as Pannonia, Noricum and Baetia, and those parts of present
day Germany which lie west of the Rhine and south of the
Danube, including Bavaria, Switzerland and the parts of Germany
about the Black Forest.

3. NOTE: Insert Map 29. THE ROMAN EMPIRE AT THE DEATH
OF TRAJAN A.D.

4. WESTERN EUROPE. Hispania (Spain and Portugal), Brittanica
(England and Wales), Gallia and Belgica, etc.

The empire was surrounded by Germania, Sarmatia, Parthia and the
remainder of Arabia.

A few words about the emperors themselves seems indicated. Trajan was
the first emperor to have been born outside Italy, coming from a Roman
colonial family living in Spain. He lived simply and was a tireless
administrator who completed extensive public works including roads,
buildings, bridges and aqueducts. He awarded 5,000 scholarships to needy
students and he financed secondary schools and pensions for teachers.
Romania was conquered because it was on the road to Byzantium at the
Bosporus. When his armies reached the Indian Ocean and Trajan went
home, revolts spread and his nephew, Hadrian, in command in Syria,
withdrew to the Euphrates. Tacitus did his historical writing during this
reign.

Hadrian (117 - 138) was the most brilliant of the Roman emperors and his
reign the most prosperous. Under him the Pantheon, which had previously
burned, was reconstructed.

Later in the century (A.D. 161) Marcus Aurelius came to power and
brought thousands of Germans into the empire, both as settlers and as
soldiers. The ultimate effect was that the "barbarians" gradually began to
dominate Rome. Marcus was one of the greatest exponents of the Stoic
philosophy and a good public servant and administrator. It was during his
administration that a great plague was apparently brought back by armies
from the East. Although Rome had epidemics as far back as 387 B.C. the
one of A.D. 165 was the worst. The disease, perhaps small-pox, remained
epidemic in various cities for fifteen years and in some areas 25 to 35% of
the people died. The population of all Mediterranean lands subsequently
decreased overall for the next 500 years. Following Marcus' death, Rome
began to visibly decay. At the last of the century the barbarian tribes began
to attack again in various parts of the empire, with the Chatti, Chauci and
Lombards raiding Italy from Germany and other Germanic tribes raiding
through the Balkans into Greece. (Ref. 48, 136, 185, 140)

Overall there were some 54,000 miles of Roman roads, making a network
for communications throughout the empire. The middle of each road was
raised and covered with gravel to allow drainage. There were post stations
every 10 to 12 miles on main roads and each station had horses,
veterinarians, surgeons, cartwrights, carriages and wagons. In the outer

empire donkeys and camels were available. Still, the bulk of internal trade
went by water. (Ref.213)

On the medical scene, Galen, born in Pergamum, Asia Minor practiced
medicine in Rome and was physician to Emperor Marcus. He dissected the
Barbary Ape and left some good anatomical and physiological knowledge
for posterity. His works were considered as an unimpeachable authority for
nearly 1,500 years even though much was in error.

Galen used an old Asia Minor combination of medicinals called "theriac"
(FOREIGN) (related to Greek word for "wild beast") and he increased the
number of ingredients to over 70. This also persisted as a treatment well
into the Middle Ages, but at least some of its popularity may have been due
to the presence of opium among its ingredients. Other 2nd century
contributors to medicine included Soranus, writing especially on diseases of
women, and Rufus, also from Ephesus, who made important anatomical
observations while in Rome particularly about the eye and brain. Celsus, a
Roman, wrote De Medicina which actually codified Greek medicine of the
previous century. (Ref. 125)

Additional Notes

CENTRAL EUROPE

Northern Germany seethed with a multitude of Germanic tribes. Bordering
on the Baltic were the Gepids and farther west the Goths, while just south
of them were the Burgundians, bordered on the east by the encroaching
Slavs. On the North Sea coast were Frisians, then Sennones, Hermanduri,
Marcomanni and Quadi, in turn going east. The last two named tribes were
actually in the region of Bohemia. An Iranian tribe, a branch of the
Sarmatians, now occupied most of present day Hungary. The Romans had
their farthest advance against the Germanic tribes in A.D. 110, under
Trajan, when they fortified boundaries from Holland down the Rhine to
near Mainz and then east to near Frank-on-Main, and then down the
Danube. All areas south of this line were dominated by the Romans for four
centuries, and were eventually filled with cities and roads. After

Christianity dominated the area, the few regions of Germany and Austria
below the above mentioned line later remained Catholic, while north of this
line civilization developed much slower and Christianity appeared much
later and then of the Arian variety from the East. These northern areas are
now essentially Protestant. To return to the 2nd century, however, the
Franks, as a loose confederacy of Germanic tribes, developed up to A.D.
200 between the Weser and the Rhine. (Ref. 136, 45)

Emperor Marcus died at Vindobona (Vienna) in A.D. 180 after 8 winters of
campaigns on the frozen banks of the Danube fighting against the
Marcomanni and Quadi. They were finally destroyed as kingdoms in A.D.
165 about the time that the Lombards (also Longobards) began their first
raids down into Roman territory and they never were quite conquered by
the Romans.

WESTERN EUROPE

In Spain, although Romans built roads for their legionnaires, it was still far
cheaper to carry wheat by ship from Syria to Andalusia than to carry it
overland from south to north Spain. The south of this country was the most
prosperous, growing wheat, grapes and olives. At the end of the century
Spain was invaded by Moors from northern Africa.

Gaul (France) was ruled completely by the Romans but again at the end of
the century there were rumblings of Germanic tribes pushing against the
eastern barriers into Gaul. (Ref. 196, 213)

All of western Europe, including England and Wales, enjoyed an era of law
and order and peace under Roman rule. The Hadrianic frontier was
generally maintained in Britain by the legions, modified only by the
conquest of southern Scotland in A.D. 142. The complete annexation of
Scotland was attempted from time to time but always failed because the
legions could not supply themselves in such a sparsely populated country.
In addition the Picts had become a force to be reckoned with. In the last few
years of their independence they had finally united under the stimulation of
savage battles against the Scots and Norsemen. Emperor Hadrian, feeling

that Caledonia was not worth the potential loss of men if it was to be
conquered, built his great wall (A.D. 122) 70 miles from sea to sea, with a
causeway of stone, forts, camps and signal towers, from the Solway firth to
the northeast. Because of constant barbarian attacks on the wall, however,
the Romans later advanced their frontier and built still another wall,
Antoninus' (A.D. 140), between the Forth and the Clyde. This one was 39
miles long and had 20 forts. (Ref. 170) The Roman port of Dover, protected
by two great lighthouses, helped keep immense trade going to from
England. Vessels bringing jars of wine, oil and fish-paste came from Spain
and Italy, while tableware was brought from Gaul. (Ref. 136, 43, 175, 222)

In Ireland the ruler of Connacht, Conn, formed a large kingdom about A.D.
150 but neither he nor his successors could manage to unify the entire
country.

SCANDINAVIA

The Scandinavian tribes had considerable trade with the Roman world,
chiefly through the Marcommanic kingdom in Bohemia and after the
annihilation of the latter late in the century, the quality and quantity of
goods imported into the north declined considerably. In A.D. 150 Ptolemy,
the Egyptian scientist wrote about several far northern tribes, including the
Goestoi (also Gautor and Geatas) and the Chaideinoi, who were probably
the Norwegian Heidnir. (Ref. 34)

EASTERN EUROPE

An older name for the Balts was Aistrians, taken from Aestiorum gentes,
mentioned by Tacitus (A.D. 98). Sometime near this 2nd century these Balts
separated into Lithuanians, Letts (Latvians), Old Prussians, Curonians,
Semigallions and Selonians. The east Ger- man Goths who had been
building up a population pressure along the Baltic for two or more centuries
particularly about the mouth of the Vistula, about this time moved south to
the Carpathians and the Black Sea, dominating all the people with whom
they came in contact. Once inside Russia these people, then called
"Ostrogoths" (East Goths), soon formed a kingdom of their own and rapidly

began to spread still farther along the river systems. Along the Black Sea
they abutted against the Iranian Roxolani (also Rhoxolani) branch of the
Samartians, who were the successors to the Scythians in this area. (Ref. 61,
8, 136)

The territory between the Black and Caspian Seas was occupied chiefly by
the Irania Alans, closely related to the Samartians. Just south of these Alans
the old Caucasian kingdom of Iberia remained as a Roman protectorate,
although those ancient people were only nominally subservient to Rome.
Otherwise, in more central Russia, the Slavic people continued to live and
expand unobtrusively, while in the far north the Finns-Lapps continued their
sparse existence. (Ref. 136)

Note:Even in this early time, in Florence credit was central to the entire
history of the city and, in fact, to the whole Mediterranean world. (Ref.
292)

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EUROPE

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SOUTHERN EUROPE

EASTERN MEDITERRANEAN ISLANDS |GREECE | UPPER BALKANS

This entire area was an integral part of the Roman Empire and was
administered in three parts: The Dacian diocese, comprised of eastern
Yugoslavia, western Bulgaria, Moesia Superior, Dacia and some smaller
areas; the Macedonian diocese consisting chiefly of Greece; and the
Thracian diocese, which was made up of eastern Bulgaria and the European
part of Turkey, which in turn, included Lower Moesia, Scythia, Thrace, etc.
Of these only Dacia used the Latin language, while the others all spoke
Greek. The Goths arrived in the Black Sea area by A.D. 214 and soon
occupied all the region west of this sea, splitting into two divisions, to be
known as Ostrogoths (East Goths) and Visigoths (West Goths). They battled
the Romans in this area throughout the century and the Roman Emperor
Decius was slain by them in Dacia as the Romans withdrew in A.D. 275 to
safety south of the Danube. Many native Dacians took to the hills with their
Latin language, to reappear centuries later as ancestors of the modern
Romanians. Gallus, a former legate of Moesia (chiefly the area of
Bulgaria), became emperor of Rome in 251. In 268 Claudius IT (Gothicus)
became the first of a series of emperors from Illyria. They were a capable
group and prepared the way for Diocletian. (Ref. 127, 206, 48)

ITALY

Although already diminished by some severe pestilence, the population of
Rome at the beginning of this 3rd century was at least one million. An

epidemic hit again between 251 and 266, with 5,000 dying each day at its
peak in Rome and with the rural populations also heavily affected. The
disease may have been either measles and/or smallpox. Civil disorders and
barbarian invasions simply added to the problem. Vacancies within the
legions on the Roman frontiers, caused by deaths from disease and
mutinies, resulted in invitations to the barbarians to both enter the legions
and settle the lands. Rapid die-off around the entire Mediterranean
hampered commerce and diminished the flow of cash to the imperial
treasury and this resulted in no pay for the soldiers, thus further mutinies,
military uprisings and civil wars in outlying areas. (Ref. 140) Armies in
different provinces tried to set up their own commanders as emperors (the
"Thirty Tyrants"), but this situation was eliminated between 268 and 284.
Of course almost constant war with the powerful Persians in the east did not
help and a succession of emperors of anarchy came and went, usually by
murders. The resources of the rich were consumed by war and by the
government. The menial work of Rome was performed by about 400,000
slaves, with even middle class citizens owning about 8 and the rich from
500 to 1,000. (Ref. 222)

The eastern part of the empire was momentarily saved in name, if not in
truth, by Odenathus and Zenobia, as we have reported in the section on
THE NEAR EAST. Gaul had revolted and assumed its own autonomy
under first Postumus and then Tetricus. Aurel- ian, emperor from 270 to
275, however, temporarily restored Gaul, Spain and Britain to the fold and
built the existing walls of Rome as a protection against future incursions by
barbarians. To keep the expanding poor of Rome reasonably happy,
Aurelian added free pork-fat and wine to the "Annona", as well as giving
bread instead of just grain. In order to pay troops, the government gradually
debased the silver currency and along with devaluation this culminated in
rapid inflation. Increasingly slaves were used in all capacities, even in
positions of dependent management of farms, shops, ships and banks. (Ref.
8)

The whole Roman realm had a short period of peace under one of the
Balkan emperors, Probus, until his troops murdered him in 282. Then
Diocles, or Diocletian, a man of genius and statesmanship became emperor
and reorganized the empire. A native Illyrian and Dalmation soldier, he

abandoned Rome and made his headquarters at Nicomedia, a few miles
south of Byzantium in Asia Minor. He delegated control of the western half
of the empire to his general, Maximian, as co-ruler in the city of Ravenna,
Italy, and then made extensive political reforms including the division of
the empire into four major prefectures and then forming further
subdivisions as dioceses and finally provinces. (Ref. 28) At that time the
empire was said to have 435,000 men under arms, chiefly infantry. Finally
Diocletian, falling prey to the common curse of ancient men of power,
claimed that he was the earthly embodiment of Jupiter, while Maximian
consented to be Hercules. This identification of god and king meant the
final failure of republican institutions of antiquity and a reversion to the
forms and theories of Achaemenid and Egyptian courts. From this
orientalized monarch came the structure and form of Byzantine and the
European kingdoms until the time of the French Revolution. All that was
needed now was to ally the oriental monarch in his oriental capital with an
oriental faith. Byzantinism began with Diocletian. (Ref. 48, 127)

CENTRAL EUROPE

As the Germanic tribes migrated westward, behind them the Slavs began to
cross the Elbe and filter into modern Bohemia, Moravia and parts of eastern
Germany. The Marcomanni, who were already in this area, raided westward
and southward, even into Italy itself. The Frankish tribes invaded across the
Rhine and along with the Alemanni also attacked directly into Italy. In
battles from A.D. 270 to 275 the Emperor Aurelian finally stopped these
invasions and held the Germanic tribes essentially at the Rhine once again.
In the Pannonian diocese, which included most of Austria, Hungary and the
western edge of Yugoslavia, the Asding branch of the Vandals had replaced
the Iazygians as the dominant element in the southern portion, while the
Gepids (related to the Goths) occupied the north. (Ref. 136, 127)

WESTERN EUROPE

Spain became a large scale producer of wine, olive oil and other products,
including a delicious fish-paste. Some insurrections in this country, as in

other parts of the empire, were eventually put down by Aurelian. Revolt
leaders Postumus and Tetricus in Gaul were also eventually defeated. In
Belgium the Franks swept the Gaulic Celts into the south, giving rise to the
original language barrier with the northern Germanic tongue dominant at
that time. In England, late in the century the pirates were so numerous
around the coasts that Carausius, who happened to be a Belgian sailor, was
assigned by the Roman authorities to clear the North Sea and the channel of
these brigands. He did so, using mercenaries of Germanic and Frankish
origin. But he made enemies in Rome and was murdered in A.D. 293 by his
finance officer, Allectus, who then kept England independent of Roman
control for three years, until Constantius Chlorus re-conquered the area
using a new navy and fresh troops. (Ref. 8, 43, 136, 24)

SCANDINAVIA

In this area the most significant change from recent centuries was the
replacement of all Lapps and Finns in Denmark by Germanic tribes by A.D.
250. Included in the latter group were the definitive Danes. Roman coins of
the 3rd century have been found on Iceland, presumably taken there by the
Roman Emperor Constans who sailed in pursuit of Celtic pirates who had
raided Wales and then led their pursuer to an arctic island.

(Ref. 175, 66)

EASTERN EUROPE

Traveling from north to south in this region, we would find Finns in the
sparsely settled far north, but south of them going from west to east along
the Baltic, we would find first the Balts, then a large area of Slavs and
finally, just north of the Black Sea, various Iranian tribes, including the
Roxolani and Alans. By A.D. 300 the Ostrogoths had expanded eastward
across the Ukraine to dominate the Roxolani, but otherwise there was not
much change throughout this century with the possible exception that there
may have been some Turkish-speaking Hunnish people already drifting into
this area. (Ref. 136, 127)

Forward to Europe: A.D. 301 to 400
Choose Different Region

1. Intro to Era

2. Africa

3. America

4. Central and Northern Asia
5. The Far East

6. The Indian Subcontinent
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8. Pacific

Europe: A.D. 301 to 400

EUROPE

Back to Europe: A.D. 201 to 300

SOUTHERN EUROPE

EASTERN MEDITERRANEAN ISLANDS

At the end of the century Crete and most of the Cyclades passed from
Roman to Byzantine control. (Ref. 38)

GREECE

Greece remained an integral part of the Byzantine Empire and in this period
was intimately connected with the activities of the upper Balkans. After the
Visigoths were victorious at Adrianople in 378 they subsequently tried to
settle in Greece (396-399) but after the Athenians paid them a large ransom,
they wandered back north and west toward Italy.

UPPER BALKANS (Please also see RUSSIA and ASIA MINOR, this chapter)

There was much migratory activity and inter-tribe fighting in the Balkan
area. The Ostrogoths had suffered a military defeat on the Dniepner by the
Huns and as they retreated westward they in turn pushed the Visigoths
ahead of them. One group of the latter, under Athanaric, went on into
Pannonia (Hungary) while a second group under Fritigens appeared on the
lower Danube and asked Emperor Valen's permission to enter Dacia. The
request was granted but famine in 377 resulted in the Goths raiding south.

Joined by some Ostrogoths, some federati[footnote], renegrades and later
even some Huns and Alani, they crossed the Danube in 378, killed Valens
and annihilated two-thirds of his troops. The Goths then ravaged the
Balkans from end to end. Separate peace treaties with various Gothic
groups were forged between 380 and 381 and many other Goths
individually or in groups eventually joined Roman forces. The original
Visigothic troops had been thinned by epidemics and desertions. In 384 or
385 Huns crossed the frozen Danube and raided down the west shore of the
Black Sea and in 386 struck both east and west of the Goths' area on the
Danube. The Ostrogoths defied their Hun overlords, striking violently in
great numbers from the east, but even so, by 392 the Huns were raiding
through the Balkans, not under a single king, but as individual tribes.
Goth mercenaries previously with imperial units

At the end of the century there were three powerful groups prowling
through the Balkans. We have mentioned in an earlier paragraph that as the
dead Theodocius' troops returned from Italy they raided through this area up
to the walls of Constantinople. The Visigoths, after raiding Greece went to
Epirus on the Adriatic and renewed an alliance with the eastern Roman
government, and as just noted above, the Huns were foraging into the area
from the east. (Ref. 229, 127)

Although a proto-Germanic tongue was probably spoken simultaneously
with Sanskrit, early Greek and other early languages, the Gothic translation
of the Bible by Bishop Ulfilas in this century is the earliest satisfactory
record of a Germanic language. Having been taken to Constantinople in his
younger years as a hostage, he mastered Latin and Greek, invented a special
alphabet on the Greek pattern and returned to his Visigothic people on the
lower Danube preaching the Arian creed which then spread throughout the
Germanic tribes. His Bible is virtually the only source of knowledge of the
original Gothic language which sired all the Germanic tongues, including
Runic. (Ref. 168)

ITALY

In the western Roman Empire there was a complex picture of recovery and
decline, literary activity and sterility, political pomp and military decay.
Gaul's 20,000,000 people prospered and threatened Italian leadership in
every field. There were 6,000,000 Italians while in the empire there were
another 44,000,000 Greek-speaking orientals and Rome, itself, was an
oriental city with a great middle class now weakened by economic decline
and rising taxes. Among both pagans and Christians alike there was an
immorality rarely known in history. Until the last third of the century the
western emperors were military men who kept strong holds chief ly through
their armies. These included Julian, who as a Caesar, had fought the
Alamanni and Franks in 355 and then marched against Emperor
Constantius of the East, to become emperor overall in 360. He was
succeded almost immediately in the west by Valentinian I and then by
Gratian (367-383), a bookish adolescent who lost control and the barbarians
soon crashed through the borders. Initially Gratian had served as co-
emperor with his father Valentinian but upon the death of the latter he was
joined by his half-brother, Valentian IT.

Magnus Maximus usurped the emperor's army and murdered Gartian in 383
and then ruled the western empire with the child emperor Valentian assisted
by the boy's mother, Justina, and a pagan general Bauto, a Frank. In 387
Maximus' army was needed to repel barbarian invaders from Panonnia and
he took the opportunity to also swoop down and take Italy itself, running
Valentian II and his mother to the East. This was the time when the eastern
Emperor Theodosius marched with an eastern army chiefly of Gothic
mercenaries, and defeated and killed Maximus in 388. Arbogast, a German
and pagan was then the chief minister to the restored Valentinian II, but
conflict soon developed and the emperor was killed or committed suicide.
Thus, in 392 Flavious Eugenius, a nominal Christian, but having pagan
sympathies, became emperor. He also was defeated in northern Italy by
Theodosius in 394 and paganism as a political force almost disappeared.
The son of Theodocius, the child Honorius, was set up to rule under the
administration of Stilicho, the son of a German officer and husband of
Theodocius' niece.

All historians are pretty well agreed on a certain sequence of events which
led to the fall of the western Roman Empire, this including the western

movement of the Huns, who in turn, put great pressure on the Germanic
tribes, who in turn, then invaded the empire which was already decaying
from its own inadequacies and problems. But each historian may have his
own concept of the relative importance of each of these factors in the down-
fall. There are those who think that the "barbarian" advance was the major
factor, and there is no doubt that the Germans had already heavily infiltrated
the ranks of the Roman army, particularly the cavalry units and the lesser
officialdom. Furthermore, the German soldier had a better sword, made of
better steel. Richard Lewinsohn (Ref. 122) insists that the horse brought the
collapse of the empire. Cavalry had always been a neglected part of the
Roman army and in Rome, the horse was more a symbol of affluence than
of real power. The mounted troops of the barbarians cut the Roman legions
to pieces and cavalrymen became the conquerors and for 1,000 years
retained mastery over Europe.

Others were more concerned with the internal problems of Rome, itself.
Throughout its history, the imperial frontiers were closely aligned with the
borders of the wheat growing regions of the classical world and now much
of this wheat growing area was otherwise occupied. Egyptian wheat now
went to Constantinople; southern Italian agriculture was declining and
losing out to African and Spanish competition, so that the west was caught
in the spiral of dwindling revenue and increasing exactions. Inflation was a
tremendous factor. Even in A.D. 302 Diocletian had inflicted the death
penalty for any infringement of fixed prices which he had established in an
attempt to present further inflation. (Ref. 213) Even so, a measure of wheat
for which the Romans had paid six drachma in Egypt in the first century
C.E. cost two million shortly after A.D. 344. This resulted in a subsequent
drift back to a barter economy of a thousand years earlier and helped to ruin
not only international trade but the western empire as well. About A.D. 350
there were 120,000 people who received six half-pound loaves of bread
free, daily, from the government.

By this time Rome had 12 aqueducts, largely underground, feeding 352
fountains. One tunnel, taking water from Lake Fucino in the Apennines,
was 3 1/2 miles long. As the empire fell, however, there were no longer
slaves to care for this system and the fountains became dry. (Ref. 213)
Perhaps scarcity of both food and water were very important in the decline

of Rome' There is still another emphasis by Kenneth Clark (Ref. 33) - "So if
one asks why the civilization of Greece and Rome collapsed, the real
answer is that it was exhausted." "The late antique world was full of
meaningless rituals, mystery religions that destroyed self confidence. And
then exhaustion, the feeling of hopelessness which can overtake people
even with a high degree of material prosperity.” [footnote |

Quotations from Clark (Ref. 33), page 4

Of course the Greek-speaking eastern realm survived to become the-
Empire of Byzantium. Part of the success of this eastern part was due to its
urbanization and the West's failure to urbanize had made that area less easy
to tax and more expensive to administer. Failing to collect taxes, the
military could not be paid. Furthermore, the government's price-fixing had
made many professions profitless and its attempts to avoid the economic
consequences of such by making the practice of such professions obligatory
and liability hereditary must have created many white-collar outlaws. We
have already mentioned that a sizeable portion of the masses were

slaves| footnote] who had a low reproduction rate and there was a high
death rate in the urban people from pestilence. A plague which may have
been anthrax reduced the empire's population by 5% early in the century.
Caught in the spiral of dwindling revenue and increasingly demanding

213, 222)

Christian emperors still ordered the execution by crucifixion or burning of
slaves who brought accusations against their masters, without trial. (Ref.
249)

By the end of this century, although written Latin had not changed its
appearance, spoken Latin had developed a new sound pattern. Stressed
vowels were drawled; unstressed vowels were dulled, weakened and often
dropped. As the great civilization which had been unified by the Latin
language collapsed, what Freeman Dyson (Ref. 56) calls a "clade" of new
Latin-derived languages - French, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, Romanian
and a few lesser ones, grew and developed in relatively rapid fashion. At
most, 20 generations separate unified Roman Europe from the Europe of
well-established local languages. (Ref. 168, 56)

CENTRAL EUROPE

This century saw the beginning of "Die Volkerwanderungen", meaning
"peoples' migrations". The Alemans were on the upper Rhine while the
Angles, Saxons, Jutes and Frisians were along the North Sea. The Vandals,
related to the Goths, were on the upper reaches of the Oder River moving
(or perhaps being pushed by Goths) from the area of modern Prussia and
possibly Denmark, south to the Danube in the area of Pannonia, a portion of
modern Hungary. The Lombards lived between the Oder and Vistula in
modern Poland and also on the lower Elbe in Germany. The Burgundians
drifted westward to the Main River and the Thuringians held their ancient,
central position in Bavaria and northward. All these tribes for the most part
were antagonistic to each other.

In the early 370s Ostrogoths, led by Athanaric, migrated from the Balkans
into Pannonia and after the Fritigen led Ostrogoths had their great victory at
Adrianople, they also plundered Pannonia. The Huns were following
closely and they set up camps in Pannonia also by 378, enslaving the
Gepids (related to the Goths) in the process. The Huns with their flocks
now occupied pasture land extending from the Caspian Sea to Hungary. In
383 Juthungi Germans invaded Austria, perhaps with permission of
Maximus, but in 384 Hunnic horsemen rode through them on their way to
Gaul. General Bauto, of the Roman forces, persuaded the Huns to attack the
Germans and they obligingly crushed them in one great sweep before
continuing on toward Gaul. Bauto then apparently got nervous about their
advance and bought off the Huns with gold and they retreated to their base
in Hungary. Thereafter individual Hun tribes pillaged Hungary at will. By
396 a group of Visigoths, headed by Alaric, had settled in Illyrium, the
western part of present day Yugoslavia. (Ref. 139, 127, 136) In Bohemia
the Germanic tribes were slowly being pushed west throughout all these
early Christian centuries by the Slavs, moving in from Russia. Switzerland
remained quiet under the Roman yoke.

WESTERN EUROPE

SPAIN AND PORTUGAL

The Iberian Peninsula remained under Roman rule, but somewhat restlessly
and occasionally the emperor had to send out expeditionary forces to put
down uprisings of rebellious peasants. The Catholic church was recognized
to be on equal footing with other religions, but there were many local
heresies. By the end of the century there were about 9,000,000 people in
this area. (Ref. 127, 196)

FRANCE AND NETHERLANDS AND BELGIUM

The Gauls of France now numbered about 20,000,000 and had reached a
high level of civilization and scarcely rated the title of "barbarian" at this
time, although many have labeled them as such. They, in turn, were now
having pressure put upon them by new barbarians of the Teutonic variety. A
competent general, Emperor Julian, had defeated the last Franco-Alemannic
invasion of France, although he allowed some of the Franks to settle in
Belgium, keeping their tribal organization while bowing to Rome (A.D.
358). The term "foederatii"(FOREIGN) was used to describe such tribes.
By the end of the century the Salic Franks expanded out of Belgium,
moving to the southwest and occupying the region between the Meuse, the
ocean and the Somme. The origin of our word "enfranchised" is from this
ancient tribal name of Frank, which meant "free". The Frisians, who were
the main power on the North Sea, were friendly to the Romans through this
period. (Ref. 137) Additional Notes

BRITISH ISLES

Of all western Europe only Ireland and Pictish Scotland remained
completely free of the Roman yoke. The population of Romanized Britain
was 1,000,000 or more, with little numerical change since the time of
Cassivellaunus. The British lived better as Roman citizens, however, than
ever again until about 1900. The wealthy had central heat and warm baths,
both of which were nearly absent again in Britain from A.D. 400 to 1900. In
this 4th century cities had begun to decline, but country villas still

flourished, as did the Roman capital of London. There was no new science,
no new thrust of power until A.D. 367 when Picts, Scots, Franks and
Saxons, as the great "barbarian conspiracy" joined in a maritime raid on
southern England, at about the same time as other Picts at- tacked and
flanked Hadrian's wall in north England. Finally Count Theodosius defeated
the raiders, using large detachments of Germanic mercenaries, as well as
modifying both coastal and inland defenses. Archeological findings now
indicate that as the Germanic mercenaries were brought in, there were
already separate Saxon forces, perhaps living among the locals as a sort of
peasant militia, and thus gradually the defense of Britain began to rely upon
these foreigners. At the end of the century, Ninian, a British chieftain's son,
went to Rome and was made a bishop, after 15 years of study. (Ref. 136,
29, 43, 91) In Ireland, after 700 years of Belgic and other Brythonic Celtic
migrations the Brythonic kingdom of Tara (Mide) was now supreme, but by
the end of the century all the Irish had relapsed to the older Gaelic dialect. It
was at this time, probably, that the Irish started to use the primitive Ogam
alphabet of lines and dashes. Herm (Ref. 91) says that these Irish invented
Ogam, but others seem to have demonstrated that it was in use in Spain and
Portugal many centuries previously. (Ref. 119, 122)

SCANDINAVIA

Archeologists have called the first four centuries of the Christian era in
Scandinavia the "Roman Iron Age" even though no Romans appeared in the
north. The people were chiefly agriculturalists or seamen, illiterate and
pagan but they already had extensive trade with Romans and the
Mediterranean, exchanging furs, skins, robes of seal-skin, dairy produce
and cattle for silks, gold, wine, jewelry, glass bowls, etc. They lived in large
halls or houses, raised summer wheat, barley and rye. Their boats were of
all sizes up to 75 feet long and they were propelled by oars. The areas of
Swedes, Norse, Danes, Jutes and Angles were already quite well delineated.
(Ref. 237, 136)

The Gothic language was well established and writing began to appear in
the system of runes, with 24 clumsy characters brought from the continent
and changed by edging to adapt the characters to wood. (See also next

chapter, please). After Constantinople became the Roman capital, Denmark

found her trade in the south had been transferred eastward to the Baltic and

via Russian rivers on to the south. Islands in the Baltic, such as Gotland and
Bornholm, thus became trading stations en route and at the same time worth
plundering. (Ref. 237) Additional Notes

EASTERN EUROPE

BALTIC AREA

We have just mentioned the new importance of the Baltic islands in trade
between Scandinavia and the Byzantine Empire. On the south shore of the
Baltic, the Germanic tribes migrated and changed positions. For example,
the Lombards were partially in eastern Germany and partially in Poland, but
late in the century almost the entire area was at least governed by the
Ostrogoths under their great leader, King Ermanarich, who extended his
realm back from the Black Sea to the Baltic, largely at the expense of the
Slavs, some of whom fled northward among the Finns and preserved their
freedom. (Ref. 137)

RUSSIA

In the far north some Finns remained with a large contingent of Slavs
crowding northward in the western portion. Visigoths (Tervingi) and
Ostrogoths (Greutringi) lived on both sides of the Dniestr. The latter were
ruled by King Ermanarich in an organized group while the Visigoths had a
looser political situation and an alliance with Rome, after 332. Large
numbers of these Goths had already been won over to Arian Christianity by
the heretical missionary, Ulfilas. The Don River originally separated the
Ostrogoths from the Iranian Alans to the east, but sometime in the early part
of the century these Alans attacked the Ostrogoths, starting their collapse as
a political entity. From the east the Huns had advanced into Russia north
and west of the Caspian Sea, crossing the Don and overcoming many of the

Alans and attacking the almost civilized Ostrogoths in the Ukraine. Along
with many of the Alans, part of the Ostrogoths joined the Huns while others
fled west and south to join their cousins, the Visigoths. The latter, under
Athanaric, fought the Huns on the right bank of the Dniestr but could not
hold and retreated west, ten thousand strong, encamping eventually just
north of the Danube. The Huns now ruled a large area of south Russia and
stood at the mouth of the Danube, about A.D. 370. A fragile Hunno-Alanic
alliance lasted about 30 years. Judging from the names of some of the tribes
overrun by the Huns at the northeastern shore of the Black Sea, other
Turkish tribes must already have been in this area and some of these may
also have joined the Hun hordes as they went west[footnote]. (Ref. 127, 8)
For comments concerning the original group of Huns, see page 331, and for
detailed information concerning their lives and characteristics, see the
section on HUNGARY, 5th century C.E.

In the Caucasus region Lazilia and Iberia were two kingdoms of the ancient
Georgians which had been pretty well Christianized under Roman
suzerainty but the more primitive Abasgians, also of Georgian stock,
remained heathen and outside Roman jurisdiction. As detailed on pages 358
and 369 the Huns went through the Caucasus on raids to Persia and
Mesopotamia and on their return they may have brought some two-humped,
Bactrian camels with them to the Ukraine. (Ref. 8, 137, 127)

Note:In southern France the Romans demonstrated ample engineering
inventiveness in this century. Using the water in the Massif Central of the
area, they used overshot, vertical water mills, using water channeled into
bucket-like containers built into the circumference of wheels 2.2 meters in
diameter, with the weight of that water turning the wheel. Sixteen wheels
used in pairs on eight terraces produced a total of about 8 Horse Power for
the adjacent flour factory, which in turn, produced enough flour for Arles,
with a population of 80,000. (Ref. 307)

Note: Trade with the south was quite active with glass bowls, silver and
bronze ladles and jewelry, fine pottery, and weapons received in exchange

for amber, furs and leather. The largest piece of amber sent to Rome
weighed 13 pounds. Even a few Latin words found their way into the
Scandinavian tongues. One was leather, there were several meaning
"trader" and "caupo", which was the ultimate source of Kobenhavn and
Linkoping. Before the Roman Iron Age the chief method of disposal of the
dead was cremation, but gradually this changed in some areas to
inhumation. In this 4th century villages became larger, as well as the
individual houses. In one 500 square kilometer area of north Jutland there
were at least 46 settlements. Forests were reduced as wood was used for
buildings and fuel. It was a period of remarkable expansion in Denmark as
well as in southwest Norway, southern Sweden and Gotland. In Denmark,
eastern Sjaelland seems to have become an important center of power-a
chiefdom. (Ref. 301)

Forward to Europe: A.D. 401 to 500

Europe: A.D. 401 to 500

EUROPE
Back to Europe: A.D. 301 to 400

This is usually considered the beginning of the European Middle Ages and
it was a period of warming climatic change. (Ref. 215) The towns of the
Roman Empire had been declining even before the arrival of the
"barbarians", but now, with the end of the empire, the West truly lost its
urban framework. (Ref. 260)

SOUTHERN EUROPE (See also TURKEY and CENTRAL EUROPE)

EASTERN MEDITERRANEAN ISLANDS

Most of these islands were under Byzantine control and both science and
literature flourished, particularly on Rhodes, in these early Christian
centuries. (Ref. 38)

GREECE

Greece was submerged in the affairs of Constantinople. The only unique
feature was a raid on the coastline by Vandals from their bases in Africa at
the end of the century.

UPPER BALKANS

In the early part of the century the area of present day Yugoslavia was part
of the Visigoth kingdom and after the Goths were defeated while invading
Italy in 402 and 403 by Stilicho, they retired again to that region. In this

Same area and in northern present day Albania the last real western Roman

Emperor lived from 476 to 480, isolated in the old Roman province of
Dalmatia. Meanwhile in the western part of the upper Balkans, Slavic tribes
first settled in what is now Bulgaria with the Bulgars (probably a mixture of
Huns and other nomads) right behind them. The Black Huns, probably
encouraged by the warming European climate which made fine pasture land
for their horses, raided through- out the Balkans and ruined the area for
some three centuries to follow. They had arrived about A.D. 400 under their
ruler, Uldin, who proceeded to lead them into Thrace on raids in the winter
of 404-405. This happened again in 408, 422 and several times in the 430s.
In 441 Illyrium was the target. Resumption of Balkan raids in 442 brought
big tribute concessions from the Byzantine emperor, Theodosius. When he
later reneged on the payments Attilla himself led a great Hunnic invasion of
Thrace in 447 and it cost the emperor still more in gold payments. (See
TURKEY, above)

Ahead of the Huns had come Slavic peoples, some from the so-called
eastern Slav groups, but chief ly from the western Slav tribes and these
settled to become the ancestors of the Serbs, Croats, Slovenes and
Macedonians. The Huns, themselves, had actually settled in Hungary, but
made their periodic raids back into the Balkans as noted. During their
various invasions and raids, many of the Hun soldiers took native women as
wives, thus putting Asiatic blood from the Black Sea to Bavaria. After A.D.
455 there were only two pockets of Huns remaining in the Balkans - one in
a portion of modern Bulgaria along the west shore of the Black Sea and the
second in Dacia, -somewhat west of the first group. In 465 these Huns
attacked the Goths who were in Pannonia, but they were defeated. A second
Gothic-Hunnic War developed south of the Danube in 465. (Ref. 137, 175,
215, 127)

ITALY (Please also see TURKEY, THE BALKANS, and CENTRAL EUROPE)

At the beginning of the century the weak Roman Emperor Honorius put the
Vandal, Stilicho, in command of the army of the West and he was
immediately put to test by invading Alans and Visigoths. Stilicho defeated
them using Vandals and even some Alanic mercenaries in two great battles
in 402. There were several other invasions by Alani, Vandals and Goths in

the next few years, during which time Honorius moved his court to
Ravenna, supposedly out of harm's way. In the early battles, Stilicho had to
strip the Rhine frontier of troops so that in the following years a new
coalition of Ostrogoths, Quadi and Asding Vandals, along with a clan of
Alans who had fled from the Hun-dominated Caucasus, moved west almost
unopposed and crossed the frozen Rhine into the now almost defenseless
France. Stilicho was executed by his own emperor in 408, thus opening the
gates to King Alaric and his Visigoths, who now left Yugoslavia, entered
Italy and by 410 had sacked Rome[footnote]. Alaric died shortly thereafter
and Athaulf became king of the Visigoths as they moved to Gaul in A.D.
411.

It is of interest that Alaric captured 5,000 pounds of pepper in Rome. (Ref.
260)

Upon the death of Honorius in 423 the Emperor Theodosius II of
Constantinople became the sole ruler of both East and West. The usurper
John was proclaimed Western emperor by the Ravenna court in 424 but
Eastern armies under the Alan General Ardabur and his son Aspar, defeated
the forces at Ravenna, executed John and made Valentinian III the emperor.
John had expected help from 60,000 Huns who had been recruited in
Pannonia by Aetius, but they arrived too late and were sent back. From this
time on the military had the greatest power and used increasing numbers of
Germanic and Hunnic auxiliaries. Aetius became the senior general in 430.
Under Emperor Valentinian III, Leo I, surnamed the Great, became the
Bishop of Rome and in essence the Pope of Western Christendom. By
courage and statesmanship he raised the Apostolic See to new heights of
power and dignity and we should note that this, in effect, marks the
beginning of the very definite separation of the head of the western
Christian Church, soon to be known as the Pope, from the few remaining
weak Western Roman emperors. For the record these emperors are as
follows:

e 455 - Petroneus Maximus
e 456 — Avitus

e 457 - 461 Majorian

e 461 - 465 Libius Severus
e 467 - 472 Anthemius

472 - Olybrius

e 473 - 474 Glycerius

e 474 - 475 Julius Nepos

e 475 - 476 Romulus Augustulus. End of the Roman Empire, West

To return to our narrative, in 440 the Vandals landed in Sicily and in 452
Attila invaded Italy with his Huns. After plundering Etruria, however, he
retreated because of famine and epidemic and apparently some gold
payment from Rome. General Aetius was murdered in 454 by Valentian III
and his associates, but then the emperor himself was murdered a year later
and the Vandals attacked Rome again, plundering the city for two weeks.
No aid came from the East, and the new Emperor Petronius Maximus was
killed. The next emperor, Avitus with some allies from Gaul won some
victories over the Vandals in Sicily and off Corsica, but then Avitus'
general, Ricimer, revolted and deposed the emperor. But Ricimer was a
German and could not become emperor, so Majorianus assumed that role.
He built a navy and beefed up the army with Ostrogoths and restored some
vestige of imperial prestige in Gaul. But he was decapitated by the wily
Ricimer after loss of a sea battle off the coast of Spain. The Western Roman
Empire was now in poverty. In this one century Rome shrank from a
population of 1,500,000 to 300,000 as Italy was invaded six times. Finally
in the sixth decade of this century the Eastern emperor, Leo I (not to be
confused with the Bishop of Rome), decided to help defend Italy against the
Vandals and sent a large eastern army and fleet to join with the western
Emperor Anthemius' forces. In 468 an army of 100,000 and navy of 1,100
ships still lost to the Vandals.

As indicated above, the line of Western Roman emperors came to an end
and Zeno in Constantinople had jurisdiction over all. The Germans who had
been brought into Italy in ever increasing numbers now, as a result of their
multiplication and intermarriage, became a very prominent faction in Italy.
Within 20 years southern Gaul, Dalmatia and Italy were all German
kingdoms. Odoacer, the son of Edecon, a minister of Attila but himself
from German tribe under Attila's rule, governed Italy as "Patricius", under
the distant Emperor Zeno. The latter soon became afraid of the power of
Odoacer and actually encouraged the Ostrogoth King Theodoric to invade
Italy. After four years of war, from 489 to 493, Theodoric became master of

an enlarged new Gothic-ltalian kingdom with a court at Ravenna. The
Ostrogoths were Arians and this religious heresy situation became a part of
the civil wars that disrupted the political unity of the empire. (Ref. 137, 127,
136, 8)

Still unconquered, the Vandals controlled western Sicily and Sardinia as
part of their north African kingdom throughout the remainder of the
century.

CENTRAL EUROPE (See also TURKEY, THE BALKANS and
ITALY)

GERMANY

"Germanic" is a designation of a great many tribes who spoke related
Germanic languages. Several, such as the Saxons, East Franks and
Alemanni eventually settled in the region between the Alps and the North
Sea, the Rhine and the Bohemian mountains and their languages gradually
evolved into modern German. Others, settling in Scandinavia, England and
along the channel laid the foundation for such modern languages as
Swedish, Norwegian, English and Dutch. Germany, in this 5th century, was
a sea of slowly changing and migrating people. The Huns were pushing in
from the east, driving a Slavic people before them who settled in what is
now eastern Germany, as Wends and Poles. The Huns themselves veered to
the south through what later became Austria-Hungary and then pushed on
into Bavaria and to the Rhine, engaging in a tremendous battle with
Romanized Visigoths at Troyes in 451. The effect of these migrations and
raids was to push the original Germanic tribes west and south with the
Vandals, Suevi and Alani ending up in Spain. The Huns decimated the
Burgundians with the remnants settling as "federates" near Geneva. (Ref.
177, 180, 137)

By the last of the century, the Franks were well established on both sides of
the Rhine in a large area including parts of both modern France and
Germany. In 481 Clovis became king of all the Franks and formed the first

of the large, central European monarchies. When he adopted Christianity
about A.D. 500 his western Frankish followers readily joined his
conversion, but east of the Rhine there was not a pre-existing local
Christian population and the Rhenish Franks remained pagan. At this same
time the Marcomanni left Bohemia and invaded Bavaria. (Ref. 177, 180,
222)

AUSTRIA

For awhile Austria was on the march route of the Huns and we shall discuss
these people more in detail later. After Odoacer (See ITALY above)
annihilated the Rugier tribe in 488 the Lombards moved down into northern
Austria and southern Moravia. Vindo- bona (Vienna) remained as a fortress
and apparent sanctuary to all of Celtic-Roman descent. Rome had
completely withdrawn from the Danube area by 488 and the vacuum was
filled by the Huns. (Ref. 181)

HUNGARY

By 406 the Huns were in eastern Hungary with Ostrogoths just to their west
and Lombards and Rugiers in the Czech area just northwest. At this time
Uldin was ruler of the Huns in Romania and after making an alliance with
Stilicho in 406 together they defeated a wave of Goths invading Venetia and
Lombardy, with the captives taken to be sold later into slavery. There were
no Alans in Hungary after about this date and thereafter the Huns
dominated the area. Very little is known about them in the 2nd decade
except that they had a King Charaton who received gifts from Honorius of
the Roman Empire. The climax of Hunnic power came after 420 but in 427
they were attacked by Romans and some were conquered so that as a people
they lost cohesion and had no central authority. By 432 Ruga was king of
some of the Huns, but his exact territory is unknown. The East Romans
waged war against him until his death in the late 430s. The Huns then had
two kings - Bleda in the east and Attila in the west. These men were
apparently brothers and their forces together broke into Illyrium in 441. In
445 Attila murdered his brother, however, and became the sole ruler. Four

years later he met with East Roman ambassadors just over the Illyrium
border on Italian soil and Attila was made a "military magistrate" and given
land along the Sava and a yearly salary. In spite of this he raided Italy in
452 after a relatively unsuccessful invasion of Gaul the year before. He was
bought off before he crossed the Po, but Milan was taken and much booty
found. Disease was probably a big factor in preventing further forays. Attila
died in 453 and while his sons were quarreling over the estate a coalition of
German tribes led by Ardaric, king of the Gepids, revolted against their
overlords and after several battles, defeated the Huns at Nedao
River[footnote], with allegedly some 30,000 Huns slain, including Ellac,
Attila's oldest son. Thus ended the height of the Hun power and although
they made a few more raids of the Eastern Empire, they finally returned to
the Russian steppe about 470 and settled on the shores of the Sea of Azov.
At about 444 Attila had been the most powerful man in Europe and a
contemporary of Valentian in Rome and Theodosius II of Constantinople.
He was not entirely a savage but actually had some sense of honor and
justice, in spite of the fact that his men at times did pillage and ravage and
that he murdered his own brother. Such atrocities as the latter, however,
were common among all ruling families of that time and even much later, in
history. (Ref. 137, 38, 127)

This river was apparently in southern Pannonia (Hungary), south and west
of the Danube

Some further description of the Huns and their lives is warranted at this
time. The origin, race and language of these people is still in some dispute.
Paleo-anthropological evidence indicates that they were a racially mixed
group with both Mongoloid and Europoid[footnote] elements. Up until the
1940s the classical concept was that the European Huns were one and the
same people with the Hsiung-nu originating in Mongolia on the northern
border of China. These definite Mongoloids allegedly moved first to middle
Asia and then spread westward. But there were Europoids in eastern Asia
and western China also, some of which were conquered and enslaved by the
Hsiung-nu. Some skeletons on the borders of China dating to 450-230 B.C.
show features of both great races - flat faces of the Mongoloid and yet the
wide open eyes of the Europoid. One of the nineteen Hsiung-nu tribes, the
Chieh, was massacred in northern Honan in A.D. 349 and the great majority
of them were found to be Europoids. The Wu-sun (part of the Jung)

neighbors of the Hsiung-nu had cerulean eyes and red beards and were
predominantly Europoids. We must conclude that at some point in time a
group of these mixed peoples, part Mongoloid and part Europoid, started
west through the steppe area to become known as Huns.

The terms "Mongoloid" and "Europoid" as used here are based on a
classification by Russian anthropologists (Ref. 127)

We have no written language from the Huns - their scribes were borrowed
or enslaved Romans, writing in Latin or Greek. But the Hun aristocracy had
chiefly Turkish names, with some Germanic ones apparently borrowed
from their sometimes allies, the Goths and Gepids. Many of their names
and place names were Latinized by their Latin chroniclers. Many languages
were spoken in Attila's kingdom - Hunnish, Gothic, Alanic, Latin and
Greek, but it is probable that their native tongue was Turkic, from the
Eurasian steppes. The name "Attila" comes from the Gepid "Atta" meaning
"father" and his brother's name, Bledas is also German. Other names and
particularly tribal names, however, were definitely Turkish.

The Huns were semi-nomadic, keeping all kinds of domestic animals, but
essentially living on their horses and off their sheep. From the latter they
had mutton, milk, cheese, felt, tents, shoes and caps (curved and pointed).
They spun the sheep wool and made linen but agriculture was apparently at
a minimum. By Attila's time, Hun nobles had houses with walls of well-
planed planks and panels, containing seats, beds and draperies. They loved
gold and extracted extremely large sums at regular intervals from the
Romans. In the 440s East Romans paid the Huns about 13,000 pounds of
gold and they also received some for auxiliaries lent to the Romans and as
ransom for prisoners and through the sale of slaves obtained as prisoners of
war. Trade was brisk at times, involving not only slaves but horses in
exchange for gold, wine and silk, which was greatly prized by all the
"barbarians". The Huns had an aristocracy and they had slaves, although
most of the latter were quickly sold to the Romans. Their wharf are was
rather typical of all barbarians from the steppes - confined principally to
wild cavalry attacks, accompanied by much terrifying noise, lightly
equipped but with accurate bows, lances, swords and shields. There is some
evidence that the nobles had some types of armor, chiefly scale armor made
from horses hoofs, but the commoners often fought naked, a feature which

added to the terror experienced by their "civilized" enemies. They appeared
to be glued to their short-legged, big- headed, shaggy, long-bodied ugly
horses. They had no spurs, but did use whips. The question of whether or
not they had stirrups is still not settled. Some nomad barbarians definitely
had wooden or even metal stirrups (as the later Magyars) and the Huns
wore soft shoes adaptable to round, wooden stirrups and it is possible that
they had them. Accurate bow shooting is difficult and lance fighting
without stirrups is almost impossible unless the lance is more or less tied to
the horse. Saddles with a wooden tree have been identified. Horses were
branded and ear-marked for identification and the warrior horses were
almost all geldings. Although archeological evidence is scant, it is assumed
that the Huns used horse drawn carts for supplies and loot. The stories of
their atrocities are legion and most must be looked at somewhat skeptically
and they were probably not much, if any, worse than any of the nomadic
invaders from the steppes or even the Romans, themselves.

Their bows were reflex, composite[ footnote] types, 140 to 160 centimeters
in length and very accurate up to 50 to 60 meters, with an effective range up
to 160 to 175 meters. An unusual weapon of the Huns was the lasso, with
which they entangled the arms and legs of the enemy so that he could not
ride or walk. The Hunnic shields were probably of wickerwork, covered
with leather and there are no archeological remains of these. They did have
some art work and many diadems of gold sheet over bronze plaques have
been excavated, along with gold and silver earrings. Hunnic bronze
cauldrons are plentiful from Hungary and the upper Balkans.

A bow with laminated construction, using wood, sinew and horn. These had
been excellently crafted and used in Asia and China for many centuries

The contemporary description of the physiognamy of the Huns are
undoubtedly influenced by the extreme terror they produced in those about
to be attacked, but there is no question but what they were a short, thick-
limbed people with flat noses, the latter having been produced in infancy by
binding, to deform the developing skull. It has been surmised that this
allowed the wearing of a special helmut with a flat nose-piece extension, in
later life. In addition, the male's faces were early scarred by intentional
knife cuts, so that beards could not grow in the mature, scarred faces. These

old healed cuts and scars, with their resulting flat, ugly faces certainly did
not detract from the overall impression of the devil incarnate. (Ref. 127)

CZECHOSLAVAKIA

About A.D. 400 the Lombards (Langobards) drove from the Elbe eastward
and southward, appearing about 430 in Bohemia and later moving into
Moravia and Austria. The Rugians crossed the Danube south from Bohemia
but were annihilated by Odoacer who had taken over Dalmatia on the death
of the Western Emperor in 480. A confederacy of Suevic bands, the
Bavarians and Marcomanni now occupied Bohemia. (Ref. 136) The
Bavarians, of course, were later to move west into Germany, but the Slavs
who stayed and settled permanently in Bohemia were the ancestors of later
day Czechs, Vlachs and Slovaks. It was only after the retreat of the Huns
that the full extent of the Slav migration would be realized. (Ref. 137)

SWITZERLAND

In this century Switzerland was invaded by the migrating Alemanni and
Burgundii so that finally the domain of the latter stretched from Switzerland
south to the Mediterranean. The Huns then almost annihilated these
Burgundians in their westward raids in the middle of the century with the
remnants remaining under Roman domination near Geneva. (Ref. 137, 127

WESTERN EUROPE

SPAIN AND PORTUGAL

The Franks, Burgundians and Alemanni who had annexed the left bank of

the Rhine, allowed the Alans, Vandals and Suevi to cross the Pyrenees and
seize land along the Atlantic seaboard of Spain. They went to the Straits of
Gibralter and some even crossed to the African Coast and the old Romano-

Hispanic ruling classes were overthrown. Later in the century, after having
made a treaty with Emperor Honorius, about 100,000 Visigoths under King
Wallia, successor to Alaric and Ataulf, entered Spain and nearly
exterminated the Alans and the Siling Vandals. The Suevi and the Asding
Vandals retired to the northwest corner of the peninsula and the northern
areas of the Basques was never taken. (Ref. 136) Some of the Vandals
retreated to Andalusia in the south, from which they later continued their
conquest of North Africa. Finally there were about 200,000 Visigoths
against a native population of some 6,000,000, but the former were much
more mobile and dynamic and easily controlled Spain. (Ref. 211, 127, 196)
Under Theodoric II (453-466) the Visigoths finally defeated the Suevi at
Oporto and then broke with the Roman Empire. Euric (466-484), brother of
Theodoric I, completed the conquest of the peninsula, but lost the original
Visigothic home base in Gaul to the surging Franks who detested the
Visigoths because of their Arianism. (Ref. 196)

FRANCE AND NETHERLAND AND BELGIUM

We have seen above (See ITALY) that Stilicho, in effect King of Italy,
withdrew troops from the Rhine to fight various Germanic tribes in central
Europe and then the Marcomanni-Quadi group, collectively known as
Suevi, easily crossed the defenseless, frozen Rhine into France. (Ref. 137)
Meanwhile the Franks had settled on the western slope of the Rhine, had
captured Cologne and were in Franconia on the east. By 430 Gaul was
about half Frankish and half Gothic and Celtic, and it was the most
prosperous and intellectually advanced of the western provinces. The
agriculture of the Germanic tribes was better suited to that climate than the
Roman Mediterranean style of agriculture so a German style of life took its
place.

As recorded above, in A.D. 451 Attila and his German auxiliaries, possibly
at the request of Gaeseric[footnote], the Vandal king, moved far into France
to Orleans and after a battle near by against a mixture of Burgundians,
Romans, Franks and Visigoths, Attila finally withdrew to Hungary after
massive casualties had been experienced by both sides. Only the Salian
Franks in the northeast of France, escaped the Huns domination in the first

surge. In 470 the Visigoths again expanded to the Loire and the Rhone and
then again conquered Spain, except for a few northern areas, as we have
mentioned above. Clovis started his control of the Franks by conquest in
481 and his conversion to Christianity occurred in 496. The Celts on the
west side of the Rhine had been exposed to this religion for a long period
and Clovis' conversion only solidified his control over them. Although his
original territory included only the northern areas about Cologne, Hesse,
Tourmmai, Cambrai and Treier, he soon destroyed other chieftains of the
Rhine, Moselle and Meuse valleys. His final mastery over all Gaul began
with his defeat of Syagrius, "King of the Romans" at Soissons in 486 and he
then became truly "King of the Franks"- (Ref. 137, 8)

Maenchen-Helfen (Ref. 127) says this idea is "grotesque" (Page 130) and
says the reason Attila went into Gaul instead of Italy is unknown

BRITISH ISLES

ENGLAND

Roman evacuation of England was probably complete by 407, and in 410
the Roman Emperor Honorius wrote to the leaders of British towns telling
them to look after their own defence. This was almost simultaneous with
the revolt of peasants, rampant disease and raids by Picts, Irish, Angles,
Saxons, Jutes and Frisians. (Ref. 136) In the 420s Vortigern, one of the
British tyrants, rose some in power and used the previously tried Roman
policy of using German mercenaries to swell his armies. Others soon did
likewise and the fate of Celtic England was probably sealed. There was a
continuous influx of new Saxon immigrants and from 440 on they occupied
the eastern and southern coastal areas of Essex, Kent and Sussex and
controlled the mouth of the Thames. The Angles came from Slesvig and
brought with them to England a knowledge of Nordic mythology, as found
in the "Song of Beoweulf ". In the southwest the Britons kept out the
Saxons, under the leadership of King Ambrosius and the shadowy King
Arthur. In A. D. 500 these Britons won a pitched battle at Mount Badon,
somewhere in the southwest. (Ref. 43) Some Britons escaped the Germans
by going to the Brest peninsula of France, subsequently becoming known as
Bretons. (Ref. 137, 222)

SCOTLAND

In Scotland there were now four political nuclei; Picts, Dalreada, Welsh
refugees and Ida of Bernicia's realm. At the end of the century the Gaelic
Scotti migrated from the north of Ireland to Scotland, giving the country its
final name. The kingdom of the Picts and Scots resulted from the fusion of
these Irish raiders and the Pictish tribes- men. By the end of the century the
Irish had taken the Hebrides, there to contest with the Vikings, and many
had beached their ships on the western Pictish coast. (Ref. 65, 170)

IRELAND

A powerful new family, the Ui Neill (sons of Niall) burst out of Mide to
take virtually the entire northern half of the island under control, including a
large part of Connaught and demolishing Ulster. Their original home near
Tara in Mide, near modern Dublin, appears to have been an early sacred
place, and perhaps using this as a lever, the Ui Neill laid claim to kingship
over the entire country. Whether their claim was generally recognized is not
known, but certainly the Eoganachta family did not, as they set up their own
state in Munster and part of Leinster. The Ulster remnants crowded into a
small area on the Irish sea coast of Dal Riata and from there they migrated
on to Pictish territory of Scotland, called Argyll. The Romans called these
Irish "Scotti" and so this name and their Goidelic language was given to this
neighboring island. (Ref. 91)

Ireland started to become Christianized about 431 and shortly thereafter
Patrick became the Irish bishop. He was originally a slave taken from a
Christian home in Roman Britain Irish raiders, but he escaped and went to
France, where he received monastic training before returning to Ireland.
Pious tradition tells of hundreds of miracles performed by Patrick and the
nun, St. Brigid, including restorations of sight to the blind and hearing to
the deaf, raising people from the dead and similar procedures. (Ref. 29)

WALES

Wales was now becoming occupied by Irish. Celtic people related to the
Feni of central Ireland gave rise to the Gwynedd in north Wales and the
Desi of southern Ireland became the Dyfed of south Wales. But these Irish
were later expelled by the P-Celtic speaking Cymru and the former left
behind only Ogam monuments in the Gaelic tongue. (Ref. 65)

SCANDINAVIA

The Sveas (or Sviar) established their kingdom on the west side of Sweden
and legend has it that the Goths developed their civilization in south-central
Sweden. Helgo, an island in Lake Malar, became a trading post in the center
of the Sviar Kingdom.

Archaeologically this era is called the "Teutonic Iron Age" in Denmark.
(Ref. 117) A Nydam boat over 60 feet long with an outward resemblance to
big boats of today, with oars and perhaps sail and very little keel has been
found there, dating to this period. These boats were similar to the ones the
Angles sailed to England from Slesvig throughout the century. There were
numerous internecine wars and wars between Norwegians and Danes and
Swedes. It was a wealthy period for the region but also a time of troubles,
with construction of forts for each community. At the end of the century,
each community hoarded gold. The use of the runic characters, the
Scandinavians' own system of writing to show the sound of their languages,
had been quite fully developed by this time. As mentioned in the previous
chapter, the runes, or letters, were edged and particularly adapted for
writing on wood.

The ancestors of the Finns, a Finno-Ugrian family of peoples, may already
have been in Finland by this time. They were at least definitely in the region
of the Baltic.

Additional Notes

EASTERN EUROPE

As mentioned previously the Finno-Ugrian peoples were spread from the
Baltic to the middle Urals and were primitive hunters and fishermen. Some
of these people were the ancestors of the present day Finns and those in the
Ural area were now called Magyars. In this century, for some unknown
reason, the latter started to migrate westward.

The original home of at least part of the Slavs seems to have been the
marshes of the western Ukraine in southwestern Russia. Originally they
were a drunken, unclean, cruel people with a passion for pillage but
nevertheless a good natured folk loving games, dances and songs. They fell
easy prey to the Huns who drove them ahead westward, much as one drives
cattle, using them as a vanguard and in a sense, as slaves. (Ref. 49) By A.D.
420 almost all of Poland was Slavic. Related to the Slavs were the Balts on
the southeastern shore of the Baltic but by A.D. 450 all of these were
subservient to the Huns. (Ref. 137) After the latter's defeat in the Pannonia
area, most of them retreated to the Russian steppe (A.D. 470) where they
settled down with related tribes on the north of the Black Sea along the
shores of the Sea of Azov, where they became known as Kutrigurs and
Utigurs. On the Crimea, there remained a small pocket of Ostrogoths.

In the last quarter of the century, the full extent of the Slavs in Russia and
west to the Elbe River and down to the lower Danube in eastern Europe
could be appreciated. The Antes of south Russia were the wealthiest and
most powerful but politically all Slavs as well as the related Balts were
naive and easily dominated by others. (Ref. 137)

Note: With the collapse of Roman authority in the west, there was less
trade out of Scandinavia, although large quantities of Roman gold still
seemed to reach there, including the island of Gotland. Perhaps the gold
was paid to soldiers or frontier tribes. As the land routes were cut there was
some increase in sea trade, so Jutland and Norway benefited. Norwegian
boats of this century were 20 to 37 meters long, but archeologists have
been unable to tell how they were propelled. In Sweden the city of Helgo
began to flourish and it remained an important center for the next 500
years. (Ref. 301)

Forward to Europe: A.D. 501 to 600

Europe: A.D. 501 to 600

EUROPE
Back to Europe: A.D. 401 to 500

An interesting map showing the extent and location of the various barbarian
migrations and their kingdoms about A.D. 526 will be found on the next

page.

SOUTHERN EUROPE

EASTERN MEDITERRANEAN ISLANDS

All, including Malta remained a part of the Byzantine Empire.

GREECE

Greece was an integral part of Byzantium. The Emperor Justinian closed
the University of Athens and some of the professors fled to the more
enlightened Persia to continue their work there. All pagans were ordered to
become Christians. About A.D. 600 Slav tribes crossed the Danube and
descended into Greece, driven by Avars behind them and soon only a few
southern coastal cities remained Greek, in the old sense. (Ref. 8)

NOTE: Insert Map 32: The Barbarian, Migrations and Kingdoms AD. 526

UPPER BALKANS

For most of the century, the Ostrogothic king of Italy, Theodoric, also
reigned over the Balkan area bordering the Adriatic in the region known as
Dalmatia. At the end of the century, however, the Bulgars, Avars and a

mixture of southern and western Slavs entered the area and remained to
become the Croats, Serbs and finally the Yugoslavians. The Avars were a
Mongolian people of mixed Turkic background who had moved from
Turkistan through southern Russia, enslaved masses of Slavs, as the Huns
had ahead of them and moved on into Europe, ravaging the Balkans on the
route and almost wiping out the Latin speaking peoples. Except for
Salonica, Macedonia was permanently settled by Slavs in this century.
Their occupation of ancient Dacia cut the land contact between Rome and
Constantinople. The Bulgars, who moved in from beyond the Danube,
controlled the Slavs in their area but gradually took over the Slavic
language and culture. (Ref. 49, 137, 125)

ITALY

At the end of the last century, the Byzantine Emperor Zeno had
commissioned the Arian Ostrogoth King Theodoric to conquer Italy and he
had promptly done so. He then reigned over southern Italy, Sicily and a
portion of the southern Balkans, Dalmatia, which was nominally under the
Byzantine emperor. In addition, early in the century Theodoric defeated
some of the Franks and kept the French Mediterranean strip as well as later
increasing his holdings in Provence. He was a relatively just and
progressive ruler encouraging a revival of learning and literature. His
minister of state, Cassiodorus, a Roman of Greek lineage, tried to reconcile
the Germanic and Roman types of culture and failing, he withdrew to found
a monastery. He composed a history of the Goths, written in Latin.

The original has been lost, but excerpts by Jordanes, another Gothic official,
are to be found in his Getica. Cassiodorus was responsible for saving some
books from the great Roman libraries, including some works of Hippocrates
and Galen, which he stored with other classic manuscripts in his ultimate
monastery. (Ref. 49, 15, 137, 127)

The long Gothic wars ruined Italy. The problems included the existence of
two distinct races - Roman and Goth - and two religions - Catholic and
Arian, trying to live side by side, each practicing its own laws and
traditions. The eastern Emperor Justinian, through his General Belisarius,

retook Sicily in 535 and invaded Italy proper in 536 but did not crush the
Ostrogoths until 563 when the Germanic Lombards, perhaps originally
from Scandinavia and now driven west from Bohemia and Germany by the
Avars, arrived to conquer the northern half of the Italian peninsula. These
Lombards were the last invaders of Italy, and they ruled their half for two
centuries. An outbreak of bubonic plague had weakened the defense of Italy
and some say that these Germanic people came into what was practically an
empty country. This plague raged in Rome in A.D. 590 and in that same
year a Byzantine counter-attack cut the new Lombard Kingdom into two
parts, across the waist of Italy but the Lombard vitality continued in spite of
this. In the area at the head of the Adriatic Sea, the Veneti tribe and refugees
from other regions formed an island empire of sea-farers. (Ref. 8, 137)

Throughout the peninsula the old Roman institutions were rather quickly
abandoned and among the first to be dispensed with were those of law and
medicine. For some reason not entirely clear, non-clerical physicians just
ceased to exist. The Benedictine monks encouraged care of the sick but
only through prayer could cure come, so St. Benedict forbade the study of
medicine. (Ref. 49, 125)

CENTRAL EUROPE

GERMANY AND AUSTRIA

The Slavic Wends had pushed into Germany as far as the Elbe River. West
of the Elbe and Saal rivers were the surviving German tribes in the
following locations, each retaining its own identity:

(a) Saxons in the north central region.
(b) East Franks along the lower Rhine.

(d) Marcomanni (Bavarians) along the middle Danube. They had migrated
from Bohemia in this 6th century into an area of collapsing Ostrogoths.

(e) Suevi (Swabians) along and between the upper Rhine and upper Danube
and along the northern Alps.

Of these tribes, the Franks were culturally of the greatest significance.
Reinhardt (Ref. 177) says that this culture stands out as the fountainhead
and pattern of the future German civilization. There is some disagreement
concerning the language changes. Wells (Ref. 229) writes that the Franks
were akin to the Anglo-Saxons in speaking a "low German" which later
developed into Dutch and Flemish, but Reinhardt does not agree, stating
that the Franks, Alemanni and Bavarians from A.D. 500 to 800 had the high
German sound shift ("p" to "pf" or "f"; "t" to "ts", ""z" or "s"; and "k" to
"ch"), while Anglo-Saxon, Dutch, Flemish (Walloon) kept the original low
or north German sounds. Clovis ruled the Franks until 511 and more about
this dynasty will be found below under FRANCE.

By A.D. 560, Clovis' sons and grandsons had extended Frankish rule to take
over dominance of Thuringia, Bavaria, Rhaetia and Alamannia in Germany
as well as the Burgundian kingdom in Switzerland and southern France.
There was little displacement of the native populations, however, and
German and French developed as separate languages while the government
remained in the hands of bishops and counts from the old Gallo-Roman
aristocracy. The real power, however, remained with the Frankish army.

The migrating and raiding Avars (See HUNGARY and CENTRAL AND
NORTHERN ASIA, this chapter) came in contact with the Franks on the
Elbe in 562 at which time the Avar Khanate was perhaps one-half as large
in north-south and east-west dimensions as the previous Hun Empire, but
by A.D. 600 the Avars domain was almost as great as the Hunnish one, as
they took over Hungary and most of Austria from the Gepids and the
Lombards. By this time the Marcomanni had also reached lower Austria.

It is of some interest that falconry, although known from the Persian court
as far back as 400 B.C., was really perfected in Europe by the Visigoths and
Franks and became an important part of the hunting culture as well as an
aristocratic pastime. (Ref. 122)

HUNGARY

History does repeat itself in Hungary. Just as the Huns had previously set up
headquarters in Hungary now a new war band, fleeing from upheavals in
central Asia and known as "Avars", established themselves on the
Hungarian plain and launched raids far and wide, pushing the Lombards
into Italy, the Slavs into the Balkans and allowing the Bulgars (another
nomad tribe) to come along the lower Danube. These Avars, who raided
Constantinople as well as western Europe from this base, were a mixture of
Mongolian Juan Juan, pushed west by the Blue Turks, and various nomad
Turkish or Hunnish tribes which they had picked up on their journey
through northern Iran and the Russian steppe. (Ref. 8)

CZECHOSLOVAKIA

As the Bavarians moved west out of Bohemia, the Slavs moved in and then
also spread to Moravia.

SWITZERLAND

This land was still occupied chiefly by Burgundians under Frankish
suzertainty and in this century they were joined by Suevi.

WESTERN EUROPE

SPAIN AND PORTUGAL

The regions of both Spain and Portugal were ruled by Visigoths but under
Roman supervision. Through the influence of the church, which used Latin
in her rituals, the Visigoths, within a century after their Spanish conquest,
forgot their Germanic speech and corrupted the Latin of the peninsula into
Spanish. This was a gradual language change and Spanish, as we know it

now, did not actually mature until the 19th century, at least in written form.
(Ref. 168) In this Spanish society, great gulfs remained between Christians
and Jews and between rich and poor. The early Visigothic aristocracy was
in close cultural contact with Rome and Byzantium and lived lives of
affluence and taste. (Ref. 180)

Early in the century the Visigothic kingdom was ruled by a boy king who
actually left the power to the Ostrogoth King Theodoric of Italy. The
combined Gothic power was great and was such that the Vandals even gave
up the western end of Sicily. (Ref. 137) An intra-Gothic war occurred in
554, however, allowing Emperor Justinian's General Belisarius to occupy
southern Spain. As if to make up for this, the Suevi kingdom in Galacia was
absorbed into the Visigothic kingdom in 585. (Ref. 8) A series of East
Roman-Visigothic wars followed.

For awhile two legal systems existed in Spain, one a written German law
and the other Roman law. Although many of the Visigoth nobles were
publicly converted from Arianism to Roman Catholicism in 5839, religious
division persisted and the problem was augmented by the prosecution of
Jews by order of Emperor Heraclius, early in the next century.

Architecture was poor, libraries small, common schools non-existent but a
hospital under non-clerical administration was established for the first time
at Merida in southwestern Spain in this century. (Ref. 196, 125)

FRANCE & NETHERLANDS AND BELGIUM

The army of the Frank King Clovis defeated the Visigoths at Voluille in
A.D. 507 and then the remainder of Gaul fell quickly to the Franks as the
Goths withdrew to Spain. This conquest of Gaul by the Frankish tribes
marks a milestone of German and European history and transcends in
importance the other migrations. All other groups were soon absorbed
numerically and culturally by the native Roman populations, but the Franks,
under Clovis, as founder of the Merovingian Dynasty, and his sons
established a military kingdom with strong agricultural underpinnings and it
persisted, with a capital at Paris. (Ref. 222) Wells (Ref. 229) says that those

Franks who did not become Latinized became the Flemish and Dutchmen
of South Holland but that North Holland is Anglo-Saxon in origin.

The development of various Germanic languages from the original Frankish
tongue was discussed under GERMANY above.

Although Clovis became an orthodox (Nicene) Christian, much of the
conversion of his people was accomplished by Irish and Anglo-Saxon
monks. He made Gaul into France but after him the dynasty degenerated.
His sons conquered the Burgundians about 532 but the Burgundian state
still remained separate under Merovingian princes throughout the remainder
of the century. Provence was acquired from the weakened Ostrogoths in
536. Frank chieftains intermarried with remnants of the Gallo-Roman
senatorial class and generated the aristocracy of France. In spite of
Christian conversion seldom has an upper class shown such contempt for
morality as this one. (Ref. 229, 49, 8, 137)

As at Merido in Spain, Lyons had a non-clerical hospital in this century.
(Ref. 125) Hugh Thomas (Ref. 213) writes that leprosy apparently arrived
in France and England in this century and that lepers were isolated, declared
legally dead and of ten excluded from the church.

BRITISH ISLES

ENGLAND

After the Celtic victory of Mount Baden which was described in the last
chapter, there was a period of security in southern England for about two
generations but then the Saxons began to advance again so that by 577 the
confrontation line extended to the Bristol Channel, Bath and Gloucester. By
600 only Devon and Cornwall of southern

England were not Saxon. The law, language and economy of the Roman
province had disappeared. While the Saxons were valley livers and farmed
and formed villages, the remaining Britons were in the hills and highlands.

Thus hill, wood and stream names are of ten Celtic in origin, while
lowlands and villages have Anglo-Saxon names. The Saxon villages were
in open areas and the houses were little more than wattle and daub
structures with a single ridge pole, sunken floor and a total space of about
10' by 15’. They used horse-drawn ploughs, milled wheat, barley and oats
and grew cattle, sheep, goats and pigs. (Ref. 29, 43)

The transplanted Saxons were converted to Christianity in the last of the
century chiefly through the efforts of the Frankish Queen of King Ethelbert
of Kent and the papal envoy, St. Augustine, originally from North Africa.
North England received Christianity from north Ireland via St. Columba,
who succeeded Patrick.

SCOTLAND

Britons and a few Angles migrated into Scotland at this period and shortly
after 525 the Irish colonized western Scotland. Soon the word "Scot",
originally an alternative to "Irish", became reserved for these northern
settlers only. In Scotland, proper, al- though the deserted Antonine wall had
crumbled it still formed the loose southern border of Pictland. South of it
the north Britons of Strathclyde, related to the Welsh, had organized an
aristocratic society with manors, towns and farms. To understand the British
Isles in those early days one must consider Ireland, Scotland, Wales and
certainly northern England as an inter-related group of communities and it
is difficult to completely separate their histories. (Ref. 137, 170)

St. Columba (See IRELAND below) carried Christianity from Ireland to
Iona in western Scotland in 543. This religion was separate from control of
the Vatican pope and was not related or descended directly from Latin
Christianity in England. For four centuries lona was the center of Celtic
Christianity and some beautifully decorated Celtic manuscripts survive
from that era. (Ref. 33)

IRELAND

Colum Cille, later to be called St. Columba, was born in Dal Riata of the
family Ul Neill and when forty-two years old, set out as a pilgrim,
accompanied by twelve disciples, toward the land of the Picts. He landed on
the tiny island of lona, there to establish his own type of Christian
monastery. While still maintaining some ties to Ire- land, lona developed
into a spiritual center for all the tribes of coastal Scotland. The Irish spirit
shone with its strongest light at that time, with culture and knowledge at a
high peak. Many learned men from the continent, fleeing the invading
barbarians, ended up on the shores of Ireland. A boatload of 50 scholars
arrived at Cork in 550, bringing with them their craftsmen and it was these
wanderers who subsequently taught the technique and made princely
ornaments as well as weapons. Then learned men from Ireland became
missionaries back to England, Germany and Gaul. (Ref. 91, 33)

Monks from the Iona monastery sailed to the Orkneys, Shetlands, the
Faroes and Iceland. (Ref. 33) It is even possible that St. Brendan, the patron
saint of County Kerry, sailed to the coast of North America in a leather
curragh with goat skin sails, in this century.

There is much of this in Irish legend and the 10th century book, Navigation
Sancti Brendani, of unknown authorship, as well as some material evidence
accepted by some established scholars including such things as 10th century
Vikings' accounts of previous Irish navigators, possible ancient Irish Druid
alphabet markings on Newfoundland rocks and "100 recognizable Celtic
roots in words which were used by pre-European inhabitants of some of the
places where Irish monks are supposed to have landed."[footnote] Fell (Ref.
86) concurs in this.

Quotation from "St. Brendan's Fantastic Voyage" by Gerald Schomp, (Ref.
126)

In 590 Columba the Younger, also with twelve companions, went from his
home in Leinster to France where he confounded the Merovingian king and
founded monastic communities at Luxeil and Fontaine and then went on to
Switzerland and Italy. At home, the Irish kings were finally converted to the
Irish version of Catholicism, after the whole of Ireland was devastated by
the yellow plague in the middle of the century. (Ref. 91)

WALES

Fleeing before the invading Germanic tribes, thousands of Britons went to
Wales and mingled there with the Welsh Celts and Irish to form the Cymri
people and the country then became known as Cymru. The family and clan
were the basis of the social order. Christianity came in this 6th century
through Dewi (David), who was canonized as the patron Saint of Wales in
A.D. 1120. (Ref. 222) This was also the era of the Mabinogen - Tales of the
Bards of Wales.

SCANDINAVIA

About A.D. 600 the Goths and the Svea of Sweden united to form the
kingdom of Sweden. From that time on the Goths, as an entity, ceased to
exist in the north, although a strong racial heritage is still seen throughout
Sweden and especially on the island of Gotland. This was the time of the
beginning of Scandinavian art with animal ornaments as the chief feature
and which was to continue until the Viking Age.

The Danes had gold and silver and Roman money. Gradually it became the
custom to seek one's living on the sea. With a population surplus and the
other Germanic tribes blocking migration south by land, they sought paths
of expansion on the open sea, although the true Viking Age was far in the
future. Additional Notes

EASTERN EUROPE

BALTIC AREA

The north-south expansion of displaced eastern Slavs between this and the

8th century cut the eastern Balts off from their western core, and in the west
the Balts were confronted by Germanic expansion. Just south of the Gulf of
Finland, some of the eastern Slavs took to the forests, wedging between the

Finns and the Estonians. (Ref. 61) Most of Poland was occupied by various
Slavic tribes who had not been disturbed by the Goths, Alans or Avars and

their villages were not fortified until near the end of the century when they

began to quarrel with each other. (Ref. 244)

RUSSIA

As the Germanic tribes moved west, the Slavs came out of the Pripet
marshes, forested, swampy region about 38,000 square miles in area
extending along the Pripet River, which is a branch of the Dnieper. (Ref. 8)
Early in the century on the north shore of the Black Sea there were Kutrigur
or Utigur Huns, along with a small pocket of Goths still on the Crimea. In
the Caucasus there were Alans and north of them on the north shore of the
Caspian were the Sabirian Huns and east of the Aral Sea were the
Ephthalites.

In 559 the Avars, defeated by the Turks in eastern Asia, moved to the
Russian steppe where Justinian paid them to control the resident Huns and
Slavs who had been raiding the east Roman Balkan areas. These Avars,
soon ruling from the Volga to the lower Danube, turned north and west until
in 562 they came in contact with the Franks on the Elbe, establishing an
extensive Avar Khanate. (Ref. 136, 137) The Western Turks, coming behind
the Avars in 576, took part of the Caucasus just west of the Caspian and
there known as the Khazar, although Alans still controlled most of the
western part of this region between the Black and Caspian seas. North of
the Khazar and the now separate Western Turkish Khanate were principally
Finnish people, sparsely settled, while the Slavs were still farther west and
dominated by the Avars.

The Black Bulgars, originally a mixture of Huns, Ugrians and Turks, lived
at this time in the valleys of the Don and Volga rivers. In this 6th and the
7th centuries there were 12 major Slavonic tribes in Russia, including the
Polinians living on the middle Dneipner in the Kiev region. They lived in
communities, held slaves, and were family oriented in a type of democratic
society based to some extent on communal ownership of property. Many
groups were govermed by "elders" rather than by chieftains. They may have

traded some with Byzantium, but the chief economy depended on
agriculture of the cut and burn principle.

Note:The Svear tribes traded sapphire colored skins through various
intermediate tribes to Rome. There is some suggestion, though, that this
was a time of crisis, possibly involving climate deterioration, soil
exhaustion, deficiency disease in cattle, violent invasions, internal conflicts
and possibly plague. The Swedish city of Helgé, however, apparently was
not affected by the decline seen elsewhere. .Frisian settlements along the
mainland coast were key centers for contact of the Scandinavians with
western Europe. (Ref. 301)

Forward to Europe: A.D. 601 to 700

Europe: A.D. 601 to 700

EUROPE
Back to Europe: A.D. 501 to 600

Slavery continued in Europe throughout these "Dark Ages" despite the
Christian Church, but in this century, when Arabs gained control of the
Mediterranean, it was difficult for Europeans to get slaves from the Levant.
Most were then obtained from the Slavic regions. (Ref. 213)

SOUTHERN EUROPE

EASTERN MEDITERRANEAN ISLANDS

The century began with these islands all a part of the Byzantine Empire but
one by one the Arabs began to take them over in the latter decades. Cyprus,
with its copper mines, fell to the Moslems in 648 and Rhodes in 654. (Ref.
222)

GREECE

Greece was now heavily infiltrated with Slavic peoples and although
nominally under the eastern Roman Empire, only some of the coastal cities
were truly Byzantine.

UPPER BALKANS

The Bulgars, whose original Kaganate was in the middle Volga far north of
the Caspian Sea, had migrated in the previous century to the Danube region.
This group, including one branch of the Utigurs, had founded a Bulgarian
kingdom in ancient Moesia, enslaving the Slavs already there but they

adopted the Slavs' language and customs and in time intermarried with
them. They began to take over more and more Balkan territory from
Byzantium by 679 and were recognized as a separate country in 681 when
their first king, Isperikh, was crowned at the capital, Pliska. These were the
so-called "White" or "Western Bulgars", originally related to the Huns.
(Ref. 180, 8)

Farther west, the Srbi (Serbs) settled in part of the old Pannonia and
Chrobati (Croats) settled in Illyricum, forming eventually the country of
Serbia. By 650 the Slavs \ constituted the majority of the people in the
Balkans. Avar horsemen, operating out of Hungary, spread havoc
intermittently through the area and repeatedly appeared under the walls of
Constantinople.

ITALY

The Lombards regained control of the northern plain of Italy, where the
Byzantines had driven a wedge, between A.D. 601 and 605, establishing a
progressive state under Duke Agilulf, who was actually a Thuringian. The
Lombards maintained intermittent relation- ships with Rome and eventually
became Catholics. Venice continued as an independent realm, allegedly
having been built up from fishing villages settled by fugitives from the
Huns, on some 60 marshy islands. (Ref. 222) Rome continued as a part of
the Byzantine Christian Empire although it was no longer its chief city. The
remainder of Italy was a patchwork of independent cities or duchies, such
as the Duchy of Spoleto and the Duchy of Benevento. (Ref. 137)

CENTRAL EUROPE

GERMANY

The Germanic and Slavic peoples had little disease and no superimposed
imperial macroparasitism[footnote] such as the Mediterranean urban

populations imposed on the peasantries there, and so they had tremendous
population growths, with the Slavs colonizing the Balkan peninsula, as we
have noted above, and the Germanic tribes swarming to the Rhine and
finally far beyond to Britain. (Ref. 140)

McNeill's terminology

Even in the previous century the Frankish kings of Germany had to reward
their followers and the church by granting away their own land and
revenues. By the middle of this 7th century two families had emerged as the
principal agents of the kings for these transactions. One of these was from
Austrasia, the traditional eastern Frankish land, and the other was from
Neustria, the new lands north of the Loire. By 687 Pepin, of Heerstal (near
Aachen) of the Austrasian family, had won out, thereafter dominating the
Frankish kingdoms. (Ref. 8) At that time several basic or stem duchies
became prominent, including Bavaria (named from the Baiuoaril branch of
the Marcomanni), Swabia (bordering Switzerland), Thuringia, Saxony,
Franconia and Frisia.

By the end of the century northeastern Germany had quadrupled its
population over that of Roman times, chiefly due to the more abundant food
supply available with the use of the "moldboard" plow, introduced by the
Slavs. This plow required eight oxen to pull it but it allowed three-field
rotation of crops and allowed not only the production of more, but also
better food, containing more amino acids and protein, thus giving the
people more energy and greater stamina. (Ref. 211) (See also FRANCE,
this chapter)

AUSTRIA

The area now known as Austria was partly controlled by the German
duchies and partly by the raiding Avars.

HUNGARY

This was the homeland of the Avars who raided in all directions from this
base. Please see this section in the previous chapter.

CZECHOSLOVAKIA

Moravians gained independence by holding off the Avars and then they
were able to stop the Franks who tried to come in from the west. After the
death of their King Samo, however, this first attempt at a Slavic state in
central Europe collapsed. Samo may actually have been a Frank but he had
managed to unite the Czechs and some of the Wends. The people of
Bohemia also repudiated Avar suzertainty and after that the Avar power
declined rapidly. (Ref. 136)

SWITZERLAND

This was simply part of the Frankish kingdoms.

WESTERN EUROPE

SPAIN AND PORTUGAL

Between A.D. 612 and 621, Sisebut, a well educated Visigoth monarch,
reconquered most of the peninsula from the Romans and his successor,
Swintilla, completed the job. Even so, the Visigoths became "Romanized"
by legal unification through the Liber judiciorum of Reccesivinth after 649
and the warrior aristocracy of the Goths was united with the plutocratic-
bureaucratic aristocracy of the Roman world. The common people raised
sheep. (Ref. 211) Although the Visigoths had not used slaves in any
significant degree previously, they took over the Roman custom with a
vengeance and in the Code of King Erwig (680-687) there were 21
provisions giving severe penalties for harboring fugitive slaves. (Ref. 249)

FRANCE & NETHERLANDS AND BELGIUM (See also GERMANY)

At the beginning of the century there were actually three separate Frank
kingdoms: (a) Austrasia with a capital at Metz, lying to the east, actually in
Germany and having chiefly Teutonic blood[footnote]; Neustria with a
capital as Soissons and Gallo-Roman blood; and (c) Burgundy. The latter
was united with Austrasia by King Clotaire 11 in 613, leaving only two.
Partly because of the Frankish custom of rulers dividing their kingdoms
among all sons, the Merovingian dynasty crumbled with a series of very
weak rulers and the ministers, or major domos, began to be the actual
administration heads of the government. Thus in 639 Pepin, as mayor of
Austrasia, started the reorganization of the Frankish state. He and his
immediate descendants gave much of the old nobles' western land to their
own followers from the Rhineland, so that, in effect, France was subjected
to anew Germanic invasion. Additional Notes

This terminology is Toynbee's. (Ref. 220)

BRITISH ISLES

ENGLAND

In the early century, the Britons of Strathclyde, Wales and Cornwall were
all separated by the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms. (Ref. 136) This was a period
of adjustment under the Angles and the Saxons, the latter being the most
cruel of the Germanic tribes.

They had probably incorporated the Jutes and Angles before the general
exodus from Schleswig-Holstein. The Celtic Britons continued resistance
on the periphery.

In 655 the Northumbrians regained leadership over Mercia, which had been
the chief power from 642 on, and then the Northumbrians reduced the
Britons (then all were called "Welsh") in Strathclyde to bondage as well as
the Picts and Scots. The bond was short lived though as the latter quickly
broke loose and by 679 Northumbria was again subservient to Mercia. (Ref.

137) Augustine became the first Archbishop of Canterbury in A.D. 601 and
his early achievements were great. After the novelty of the new religion had
worn off, however, many English leaders returned to their old ways so that
by 616 even the church in Kent was in danger of extinction. (Ref. 43) Papal
Christianity spread into north England through the increasing power of
Edwin, King of East Anglia. In 664, after a conference of English (papal)
and Briton (Celtic) bishops at the Synod of Whitby, most of the island
became Romanized Christian but Ireland remained aloof. Two conferences
of the Roman St. Augustine and his Saxon convert Christians with the
bishops of the "Far Western Christianity" of Ireland, failed, and the two
camps remained enemies. After that Synod a severe epidemic occurred, the
nature of which is unknown. (Ref. 140) Bede recorded four epidemic
pestilences in England within the 20 years from 664 to 683.

Of incidental interest is the fact that there was no wheel-turned pottery
(Anglo-Saxon) in England before A.D. 675. (Ref. 18)

SCOTLAND

The Scots, originally from Ireland, as we have previously noted, pushed
their way up the Great Glen and approached Iverness before they were
finally defeated by the Picts. In the south the Angles were pushing north
from England with both cavalry and infantry but the Picts, under Bridei,
were temporarily united and able to drive them back in the battle of
Nechtansmere in 685. (Ref. 170, 222)

IRELAND

At this time the Irish were materially and politically more backward than
the English but in a special cultural way they were the most advanced of all
peoples north of the Pyrenees and the Alps. Both Gallic and British scholars
came to Ireland to escape the Germanic invasions. Ireland was never
invaded by these tribes and was never Romanized. Its Christianity was a
separate brand which was mentioned above as the Far Western
Christianity (2) and which maintained an independent existence and

development for many hundreds of years, reaching its apogee in the 6th and
7th centuries.

As in England the yellow plague hit Ireland in 664. Although we mentioned
Irish exploration of the Faroe Islands in a previous chapter, some authorities
believe that they did not discover these islands until about 690.

WALES

This remained as a western Celtic fringe.

SCANDINAVIA

Additional Notes

NORWAY

An excavation at Kvalksund, Norway, shows that by about A.D. 600 sizable
sailing ships were being built. These were shallow-draft vessels with
planked decks but no keels. Thus, new mobility on the sea, coinciding with
increased hunger at home, led to the Viking raids some two centuries later.
(Ref. 160)

SWEDEN

This was an age of gold called the Vendel Period, in Sweden. The Swedes
were beginning to push north and west to the northwest coast of Norway.

DENMARK

The Danes sea-faring was steadily increasing and they were already
occasionally raiding the coasts of France.

FINLAND

This country was very sparsely occupied by Lapps whose early history
remains something of a mystery. Speaking a Finno-Ugric tongue,
traditionally it has been considered that they originated in central Asia but
recent genetic studies indicate that they are true native Europeans.

EASTERN EUROPE

BALTIC AREA

Thomas (Ref. 213) says that the one contribution made by Slavs to human
improvement was the re-introduction of the heavy plow, which was a
variation of one used in northern Italy in the 1st century C.E. It had a knife-
like iron blade in front which slashed vertically into the ground, a
plowshare which cut horizontally through the ground and a mold-board
which turned the soil over to one side. We have remarked earlier that the
German put this to very good use in this century. Closely related to the
Slavs were the Lithuanians, who together with the Letts and the ancient
Prussians, formed the Baltic branch of the Indo-European family. They
lived between the present day Memel and Estonia.

Poland had Slavic people divided into many tribes with no unification or
organization at this period.

RUSSIA

Part of far eastern Russia was controlled by the great Turkish Confederacy
which simultaneously dominated all of central Asia up until 630. The

Khazar Khanate in southern Russia expanded rapidly, defeating their
Caucasian neighbors, the Alans and the Bulgars and it was some of the
latter who fled to the Danube next to the remaining Avars. Some went to the
Volga where they remained under Khazar suzertainty. By 650 the Khazar
Khanate extended from the Dnieper to the Caspian Sea, with a very modern
city, Itil, as capital on the north shore of the Caspian. Northward they
extended almost to the headwaters of the Volga. Their rulers accepted the
Jewish religion, apparently to assert their independence from both Moslems
and Christians.

Just north of the Black Sea, the Utigur and Kutrigur Huns coalesced and
took a new name - Great Bulgaria. (Ref. 136) Elsewhere in western Russia
the Slavs lived more or less freely and independently. In the very far north
there were still the scattered Finns and/or Lapps. (Ref. 137) Additional
Notes

Note:Dorestad, lying in a fork between two branches of the Rhine, with
good access by water also to Meuse, was established by Franks as a trade
center for contact with Frisians, Scandinavia and England. (Ref. 301)

Note:The elaborate sailing ships common on the Baltic by the 11th century
may well have been used as early as this 7th century. The shape and
construction came from a long Baltic tradition, but the mast and sails were
taken from western Europe. (Ref. 301)

Note:The Russian arctic had attracted trade probably even in this early
century. The Kama River valley was rich with a settled population, large
grave yards and hill forts. Sassanian and Byzantine silver has been found
there, apparently incident to trade. From Kama, the arctic valley of the
Pechora was exploited. The Khazars controlled the southern part of that
trade route and gathered tribute from a large area north of the Black and
Caspian seas. All of this trade was interrupted in the middle of the century

by the expansion of Islam and its attempt to conquer the Khazars. As a

result, Byzantine and Sassanian coins disappeared from the Caucasus by
700. (Ref. 301)

Forward to Europe: A.D. 701 to 800

Europe: A.D. 701 to 800

EUROPE

Back to Europe: A.D. 601 to 700

SOUTHERN EUROPE

In these early Middle Ages, the deadly black stem rust began to ravage the
wheat fields, producing famine in various areas of southern Europe. The
disease had been brought in, unknowingly, with the barberry bush by the
Arabs. The barberry was valued for the curative potion (the stem) and the
brilliant berries, edible in a preserve. (Ref. 211)

EASTERN MEDITERRANEAN ISLANDS

In this century Crete, previously under Byzantium control, along with most
of these islands, had some bases established by the sea-going Venetians.
Cyprus was taken by the Arabs and then reconquered by Byzantium. (Ref.
222)

GREECE

For some centuries now the great classical and early Christian centers of the
lower Balkans, - Athens, Corinth, Thebes, Salonica and others, had lost all
contact with the world of which they had been an integral part. In 726
Greeks revolted against the Byzantine Leo III, sending a Greek fleet toward
Constantinople but they were defeated by the imperial navy using an
incendiary mixture called "Greek fire". (Ref. 222) As the century ended the
Slavs were once again beating down on the borders of this country.

UPPER BALKANS

As in the last century the Balkans were filled with Slavic peoples, mixed
here and there with Bulgars and Avars. In the new kingdom of Serbia the
Serbs accepted the Greek Orthodox form of Christianity while the Croats
adopted the Roman form. Stress inevitably followed so that by the end of
the century the Croats had formed their own independent kingdom. (Ref. 8)
The Danube Bulgars had continued to move west into the Balkans, taking
land from Byzantium. Tervel, king of the Bulgars, actually exacted tribute
from Emperor Justinian II. He was followed by King Sevar, the last of the
Dulo Dynasty. (Ref. 206) Periods of war and peace between the Bulgars
and Byzantium alternated throughout the century.

ITALY

The Lombards, who now filled northern Italy, fought by bow and arrow
from horseback and were essentially a warrior people. As a papal state
emerged where a pope (though not an emperor) still lived, it was threatened
by the Lombards and the pope finally requested the Frank King
Charlemagne to invade the area. At the end of the century Charlemagne
complied and Lombardy became a province of the Franks. In an attempt to
regain prestige to match that of Byzantine, Pope Leo II] eventually teamed
up with the Frank king to extend the Church's domain, with the result that
the pope became the spiritual ruler and Charlemagne the temporal emperor
of the Holy Roman Empire. By this time, Rome had dropped in population
from about 1,000,000 in A.D. 400 to under 100,000, principally because of
famine after the cessation of the giving of free bread. Gradually a
coalescence of the Lombards and the Roman people developed with the
result that there was a substantial Lombardic contribution to the Italian
language and to the artistic and literary fields. The Latin language
continued to be Latin, but further and further removed from the classical
standards. Cases had all but disappeared by this time and the language has
been called Proto-Romance. (Ref. 137, 213)

NOTE: Map 34: Lombard Kingdom Before Its Conquest by Charlemagne
in 774 and

Map 35: Expansion of the Papal States 756-817
Maps taken from Reference 97

Naples, Amalfi and Venice continued as independent states with Venice
actually helping the Moors enslave some Europeans. (Ref. 222) The first
European medical school was founded in this century at Salerno, in
southern Italy. Sardinia was invaded by Moslem forces in 720 and in this
and the next century Sicily was exposed to sudden, devastating raids by
Moslem free-booters. (Ref. 137, 83)

CENTRAL EUROPE

The use of the heavy plow (see pages 439 and 443) in northern Europe
accounted for an increase of food and a consequent increase in population.
Although there continued to be Merovingian kings in the Frankish
kingdoms of Austrasia and Neustria up until 7529 throughout this century
the real administration of western Germany, as well as of France, was under
control of the House of Pepin, later called the Carolingian Dynasty, all
descended from Pepin of Landen and Arnulf, the Bishop of Metz. Among
these descendants was Charles Martel, Mayor of Austrasia and Neustria
from 714 to 741 (See FRANCE, below), and Pepin III, the Short, Mayor of
Neustria and king of the Franks from 747 to 768. It was this Pepin who first
responded to the pope's pleas for help against the Lombards and did manage
to force them out of Pentapolis and Ravenna. Thereafter the Carolingians
maintained a protectorate over the papacy in Italy. (Ref. 180, 119)

In 768 Pepin III's son, Charles the Great (In France - "Charlemagne" and in
Germany more correctly "Karl the Great"), became king of Austrasia,
Neustria and northern Aquitaine, while his brother, Carloman, ruled over
southern Aquitaine, Burgundy and Septimania. Charles (or Karl) was a
typical German, six feet in height, a superb swimmer and athlete. He
married a Lombardi princess but soon repudiated her and conquered all of
Lombard Italy as well as Venetia, Istria, Dalmatia and Corsica. The
Bavarian duchy had begun an eastward expansion that drove a wedge
between the southern Slavs and the main mass of Slavic people to the north

by 758, thus isolating the Balkan groups. Karl incorporated Bavaria into his
kingdom in 778 and in the next year took Carinthia (southern Austria) and
Vienna became a Carolingian-Frankish border fortress. Saxony fell to Karl
in 785 and so all Germany, Austria, Bohemia and even a portion of
Hungary came to be a part of his domain. As a result the more northern
Slavs were pushed back east of the Elbe River, creating "New Germany", a
distinction that has persisted in some degree to this day. The Elbe now
roughly corresponds to the border between present East and West Germany.
The history of the region of Brandenburg (later Prussia) begins when Karl
the Great established forts along the Elbe to keep out the Slavs. (Ref. 180,
137)

In Hungary Karl's troops reduced the Avars to a mere remnant, as they were
crushed between this Frankish army and a Bulgar attack from the east in
796. Switzerland was a part of the original possession of the Frankish
Empire, included in the regions known as Burgundy and Alamannia and it
was administered primarily under Neustria. (Ref. 137)

Charlemagne's Empire was Roman Christian and Germanic, all in one.
Economically and socially it never attained to that cohesion and unity that
characterizes a thoroughly civilized state. Beer had been made and drunk in
large quantities in the German areas for several centuries and it was
consumed throughout Karl's territory and even made by master brewers in
his palaces. No hops were used. Christianization of northern Germany was
completed partly by missionaries and partly by forced conversion by
Frankish overlords After Charlmagne was crowned emperor by the pope on
Christmas, A.D. 800, his Italian affairs occupied him so completely that he
lost control of Germany and the Slavs again entered from the east in the
next century. The Weser River represented the farthest limits of the Slav
expansion westward. (Ref. 177, 181) Additional Notes

WESTERN EUROPE

SPAIN AND PORTUGAL

In A.D. 709 and 710 Moslem Moors attacked the Spanish coast but didn't
land. At about the same time the Visigoth nobles were quarreling over the
succession to the dead King Wittiza, finally electing a younger son,
Rodrigo. Supporters of the eldest son fled to Morocco to get aid. As a
result, a mixed force of Arabs and Berbers, led by the Berber Tariq from
Mauretania, invaded Spain in 711, quickly taking the southerm part, helped
both by Jews and the Visigoth supporters of the eldest son claimant to the
throne. Another Moslem general, Muza, landed at Algeciras in 712, quickly
took Seville and Merido and then headed north. The surging Moslems went
on to cross the Pyrenees and swept into France to be stopped finally at
Tours, by Charles Martel, in 732. Falling back into Spain, the Moslems
broke up the overgrown estates of the Visigothic nobles and developed a
new society. The ruling Abbasid Caliphate was never accepted in Spain and
the Spanish Moors declared independence from Baghdad in 756, reviving a
branch of the old Omayyad family to form the Omayyad Dynasty of
Cordoba which lasted until 1031. No western city equaled Cordoba in size
or culture and no government in the west was better than that of Moslem
Spain. (Ref. 2, 137, 8, 196)

The unconquered Goths, Suevi, Christianized Berbers of a previous
migration, and the Iberian Celts went into northwestern Spain and Portugal,
where the Goth, Pelayo, became king of Asturias and founded what was to
become the Spanish monarchy. After Pelayo came Alfonso I and I and
during this period the Visigoth Spanish Catholics now brought forth Spain's
most brilliant and characteristic creation, Mozarabic art, found now in
liturgy remnants only in Toledo and Salamanca chapels. These Catholics,
allowed to worship as they pleased, although more or less confined to
ghettos within the Moslem state and separated from the main European
tradition, developed both their own individual brand of Catholicism and art.
The latter was a vivid combination of remote classicism, Islamic miniatures
and the primitive idioms of Visigothic folk-art. It is of interest that this
Muslim conquest of Spain also culminated in a “Golden Age" of Spanish
Jewry’ (Ref. 180, 8)

Hisha I, emir from 788 to 796, reversed the doctrine of tolerance and
attacked the Christians, although he promoted a religious and intellectual

aristocracy. This latter group was suppressed with cruelty; however, as
Hakam I took control in 796. (Ref. 196)

FRANCE & NETHERLANDS AND BELGIUM

It is again recommended that the sections on GERMANY and FRANCE be
studied together in this and adjacent centuries since both were administered
more or less together under the Franks. In 732 Charles Martel, son of
administrator Pepin II, extended his father's confiscations to include all
income from church lands under Frankish control in order to support a
substantial force of cataphracts (armored knights) which gave him military
supremacy in the entire area. It was he who stopped the Moslems at Poiters,
near Tours in 732, using cavalry equipped with stirrups so that they could
ram home lances and use maces and swords while remaining mounted.
Without this battle, western civilization might never have existed.
Following that victory Europe had to increase its numbers of horses and
horsemen to continue to protect itself and "feudalism" was the result. (Ref.
260, 279)

The Merovingian Dynasty came to an inglorious end and the Carolingean
Dynasty began with Martel's son, Pepin , who began to dominate a greater
area and paved the way for his son, Charles (Charlemagne), the greatest of
the medieval European kings. He allowed the pope to crown him "Emperor
of the Romans" in 800 A.D. No eastern emperor had visited Rome for some
300 years. (Ref. 49, 213)

In the far north in the Belgium-Netherlands area, the Frisians were on top
commercially, trading in wine, salt, oil, glass, textiles and metal work. In
the far south of France a few Byzantine goods drifted in and in return the
West sent slaves, iron and timber to the East. (Ref. 137, 213) (Continue on
pages 488 and 490) Additional Notes

BRITISH ISLES

ENGLAND & WALES

The scholar Bede states that five languages were spoken in England at this
time - English, Celtic, Irish, Pict and Latin. The early English was the
language of the Angles and differed little from Saxon and was intelligible to
the Franks, Norwegians and Danes, all of these being varieties of basic
German. The Beowulf, a famous Anglo-Saxon poem, appeared in England
in this century. Gradually the Saxons developed kings, as glorified generals,
who protected themselves by giving lands to barons and in this way a land
aristocracy soon developed. In the last half of the century there were
ceaseless wars between some seven kingdoms, all now nominally Christian.
But Bede, writing to the Bishop of York, Egbert, in A.D. 734 complained
that some bishops were drunken revelers and Boniface wrote in much the
same vein to the Archbishop of Canterbury, complaining of drunkenness of
bishops and loose living of nuns. So Christianity was not having an easy
time. (Ref. 43)

All of this 8th century activity was followed in A.D. 793 by the first great
Viking sacking of the monastic center at Lindisfarne, probably by
Norwegians. Another group, probably also Norwegian, had come down the
English channel in 789, landing at Portland on the Dorset coast. Danes from
Jutland also started their raids. There is no doubt that all of these raiders, -
Angles, Jutes and the later Danes and Normans as well as the North- men
who went down through Russia, and the still earlier Goths, were all waves
of one and the same type of Germanic people. (Ref. 229) But to return to
England, in spite of all the turmoil, there was some international trade and
visitations in this century. There were even Chinese in King Offa II's Mercia
court at the end of the century. Mercia, along with Northumbria and
Wessex, were the largest of the English kingdoms. (Ref. 8)

(Continue on pages 490 and 492) Additional Notes

SCOTLAND

Throughout the last century the Picts had fought against each other, but
after a last intramural battle in 729, Oengus became king of all Picts. He
promptly made peace with the Angles and then turned to battle the Scots,

capturing Dunadd and Dunolly, drowning one Dalriadic king and forcing
others to take to the sea. But when he wheeled south again against
Strathclyde, his army was annihilated, perhaps through some treachery.
(Ref. 170) Iona, the Scottish religious shrine island, was invaded by the
Norse in 794 and was burned just after the turn of the next century. (Ref.
119)

IRELAND

The Christian world of Patrick's Ireland was shattered by Vikings in 795
and raided by them for the next 200 years. As a result of this, there are
currently genetic similarities of populations of Scandinavia, Scotland and
Northern Ireland, even though geographically separated. Irish monks landed
in Iceland about 759, in hide-covered curraghs. (Ref. 143, 260)

SCANDINAVIA

NORWAY | SWEDEN | DENMARK

Of the territory of the Germanic peoples, only Scandinavia kept out of
Charlemagne's Empire. In Sweden, the town of Birka began to dominate the
area of Lake Malar. It was an economic unit of considerable importance.
Even a bronze Buddha has been found there. Just west of present day
Stockholm, the island of Helgo was the center of industry, including the
production of cheap jewelry, iron-working, etc.

The first Dano-Norwegian raid to strike real terror in Europe was the attack
on Lindisfarne, England in 789, where a famous convent and seat of
learning was attacked and the inmates killed or taken off as slaves. Many of
the raids of the Frisian and English coasts originated in the vigorous
kingdom of Juteland in Denmark. "Viking" probably means "men from the
fiords", because "vik" means "a little fiord" in both Danish and Norwegian.
In addition to sea travel, the Scandinavians travelled great distances by

land, as from Uppland, Sweden to Trondelag, Norway, by horses, sledges
and carts. There was an ox-road from north Juteland into Germany. In
winter men used skates and skies and put spikes on horses’ hooves. (Ref.
117) Additional Notes

FINLAND

In this century the Finns, coming from the south and southwest, took
present day Finland (at least Karelia) from the Lapps, who receded
northward. As noted previously the Finns spoke a Finno-Ugric language,
related to Lapp and Livonian. Their language, although not their blood
types, suggest distant relation to the Huns and the Magyars who came from
the upper Volga and Oka rivers. There were three basic tribes: the
Tavastians, who settled in western Finland; the Karelians; and the true Finns
who had originally settled on the south shore of the Gulf of Finland. They
cleared the forest and drained the marshes, but the three tribes waged war
on each other. (Ref. 61)

EASTERN EUROPE

SOUTHERN BALTIC AREA

Related to the Finns were the Borussians (Old Prussians), Esths (Estonians),
Livs (Livonians), Litva (Lithuanians) and Latvians who settled the Baltic
areas south of the Gulf of Finland. All of these people remained pagan for
several centuries.

Throughout this and the next century the Goplani and Lendizi Slavic tribes
competed for control of the central area of Poland, with the Goplani initially
the more successful. Recent excavations at Mietlica show sunken houses,
chiefly of one room, rather typical of early Slavic abodes. Few houses had
identifiable hearths, but there were hearths and pits in the central area of the
town, suggesting a practice of communal cooking. (Ref. 244)

RUSSIA

The word "Rus" may have derived from the Finnish Ruotsi, old Norse rodr,
or may be related to Rolagen in Uppland, Sweden. There were two major
trade routes of the Viking Scandinavians down through Russia. The first
went from the Baltic directly into Lake Nevo (Ladog) then down the River
Volkhov to the great Lake Ilmen, to Lovat and portage to the Dnieper.
Along this route, great towns of Kiev, Smolensk, Novgorod and Staraja
were founded. The second was a more easterly route, along the Volga where
there were already towns established for the fur trade and controlled by
Bulgars and Khazars who charged a toll on traders. From the great bend of
the Volga traders could strike out across the desert to reach the Silk Route
somewhere near the Aral Sea. (Ref. 237)

Itil, on the mouth of the Volga and capital of the Khazars, became one of
the great commercial cities of the world. The Arabs raided the Khazar
homeland and put an end to the greatness of this Khanate, as the Volga
Bulgars took advantage to assert their independence in the north of the area
and the same was probably true of the Magyars, a Finnish tribe that had
migrated to the steppe north of the Black Sea and had up until then been
under Khazar domination. Their language was basically Finnish with a
Turkish element added. These three oriental powers - Khazars, Bulgars and
Magyars - remained friendly, with the Khazars still somewhat senior in the
relationships. Reduced in size, the Khazar Khanate persisted until about
A.D. 1,000 and its people did help to re-route the land trade route to the Far
East north of the Caspian as Justinian had wanted to do. (Ref. 137)
Elsewhere in Russia by the end of the century there was a Slavic Sea, with
Slavic peoples spilling over into central Europe and the Balkans. Additional
Notes

Note:As a few of the very early Viking raids started to seek victims outside
the Baltic, in 800 Charlemagne ordered defenses constructed on the north
coast of Frankia, as protection against pirates in the Gallic Sea. (Ref. 301)

Note:Dorestadt now became the largest and most active trading center in
northwest Europe, with trade chiefly in the hands of Frisians. (Ref. 301)

Note:A charter of 729 shows that King Offa was organizing defenses
against pagan seamen early in the century. The Lindisfarne attack is well
documented by letters, but that was not the first place to be raided in
western Europe, just one of the more extensive and noteworthy. (Ref. 301)

Note:In addition to the previous trade items from Scandinavia there was
now added walrus ivory from northern Norway. There were significant
increases in imports of glass bowls, beakers, pottery, mill-stones and silver
coins from western Europe through Frisia to Denmark and Helgo in Lake
Malaren in Sweden. Boat-graves in the latter country contain such glass
and coins. In Denmark there was built the Danevirke, a complex
fortification of timbers across the base of the peninsula, perhaps because of
Charles Martel's campaign against the Saxons in 738. The Limfjord was
open at both ends and that was the normal route from the North Sea to the
Baltic. The trade route from Dorestadt up to Limfjord was well sheltered
by islands and from the eastern end of the Limfjord the course went down
through either the Great or Little Belt, where the exit was commanded by
the island of Samso. This was bisected by a canal, either to facilitate tribute
or protection. In the east, Courland was subject to the Swedes and Staraja
Ladoga was established in the last half of the century on the route leading
to the rich fur areas of north Russia. The Danes and Swedes fought each
other almost continuously. King Anoundus of Sweden, exiled in Denmark,
got 21 ships from the Danes to add to 11 of his own and returned to attack
Birka. In some way this was diverted, however, and he attacked the Slavs
instead. (Ref. 301)

Note:About A.D. 770, after the Umayyads were overthrown by the
Abbasids, Persian coins were once again in circulation throughout Russia.

The Khazars were again the chief intermediaries. (Ref. 301)

Forward to Europe: A.D. 801 to 900

Europe: A.D. 801 to 900

EUROPE
Back to Europe: A.D. 701 to 800

As this century opened, and particularly in A.D. 814, the year of the death
of Charlemagne, Europe and Asia were recovering from the previous waves
of barbarian invasions and a series of powerful empires extended in
unbroken sequence from the Atlantic to the Pacific. The northern ones of
Europe, however, - Frankish and Bulgarian - were really conquests of war
bands and had very little stability. (Ref. 8)

SOUTHERN EUROPE

EASTERN MEDITERRANEAN ISLANDS

The copper mines of Cyprus continued to be exploited. Over a period of
some 3,000 years about 200,000 tons of that metal has been produced on
Cyprus. The smelting requires charcoal in the amount that would be the
equivalent of 150,000 square kilometers (58,000 square miles) of forest.
Since all Cyprus totals only 9,300 square kilometers, the forests of the
island must have been destroyed at least 16 times. (Ref. 281) The Turks
took Crete from the Byzantine controlled Venetians and in 825 built a base
with a surrounding moat, where Moslem pirates dominated until the middle
of the next century. Malta was taken by the Moslems in 869. (Ref. 38, 222)

GREECE

The greater part of Greece was a part of Byzantium and, as such, shared in
its temporary renaissance. Bulgaria took over part of northern Greece as a
part of their expansion early in the century. Demonstrating the geological

instability of the region, an earthquake of 856 killed 45,000 Corinthians.
(Ref. 222)

UPPER BALKANS

The Avars were conquered by Charlemagne in 805 and as the remnants
were pushed out of Hungary into the upper Balkans, they were absorbed by
the Bulgars and Slavs. In 811 the still pagan Bulgars, under Prince Drum,
defeated and destroyed the Byzantine armies of Emperor Nicephorus and
then they took over a large part of the peninsula, even including some of
Greece. Their territory then stretched from the Danube to the Theiss and
from the Carpathians to the Dniester. Originally a Turkish people, the
Bulgars became, by repeated admixture, almost entirely Slavonic in race
and language. The Bulgar Khanate, under Czars Malamir and Boris ,
continued to expand rapidly and their empire even included a great part of
Hungary until about 893, when the Magyars overcame the light hold of the
Bulgarians in that region. (Ref. 137, 8)

Bulgaria and Serbia were won for the eastern Christian Church in 870 and
879, respectively, through the efforts of Cyril and Methodius, Macedonian
Brothers, who helped Khan Boris to evolve a Slavonic or Cyrillic alphabet,
thus allowing the development of a national written language and culture.
Faced with Slavonic sounds which did not exist in Greek, they stretched the
Greek alphabet as far as it would go, then drafted one or two Hebrew
characters and invented others. The Eastern Church (Russian, Ukrainian,
Serbian and Bulgarian) still uses this Cyrillic alphabet. (Ref. 168, 222)
Farther for Western Christianity in 879, after they had made themselves
independent of the German Empire in 869. (Ref. 137)

ITALY

We noted in the last chapter that Charlemagne had seized the Lombard
Kingdom in 774 and this remained under his control until his death in 814.
Italy, as a whole was under divided rule. By the Treaty of Verdun of 843,
the Frankish heir, Lothar, got a long central strip of Europe along with

northern Italy and down to the frontier of the Duchy of Benevento in
southern Italy and he retained the title of emperor. A weak papacy, leagued
with France, ruled a central area; the Venetians had their own kingdom; and
various dukes ruled scattered provinces. Part of Sicily was conquered by the
Aghlabids from Tunisia in 827 and by 840 they held most of that island and
the heel of Italy. They were finally expelled by the Byzantines at the end of
the century. During the period of the Moslem raids, even Rome had been
attacked. (Ref. 8, 137)

While eastern and southern Italy, in spite of the Moslem raids, remained for
the most part Byzantine in culture, the rest of the peninsula developed a
new civilization, a new language, religion and art from its Roman heritage.
The Italian language became the most melodious of tongues; Italian
Christianity was a romantic and colorful paganism, - a frank mythology of
legend and miracle. Rome itself declined and science succumbed to
superstition and only medicine kept its head up through the monasteries.
Latin Christendom adopted the Iranian type of heavy armored cavalry and
with this began to stem the barbarian tide and pave the way for counter-
expansion in the next two centuries. A bright spot on the peninsula was
Salerno, where a university with a medical school was founded, which soon
became famous throughout Europe. (Ref. 49, 125)

CENTRAL EUROPE

GERMANY

The empire of Karl the Great (Charlemagne) was a theocratic church-state
with his functioning as a priest-king and as an emperor. Included in his
religious missions had been the conquest and conversion of the Saxons. He
regarded the pope as simply his chaplain. (Ref. 181) At the same time, his
empire was actually an artificial construction and did not survive him.
Nevertheless, in a sense, he saved civilization because through him the
Atlantic world re-established contact with the ancient, Mediterranean
culture. He did this by arranging for the collecting and copying of books.
With the exception of 3 or 4 surviving original antique manuscripts, our
whole knowledge of ancient literature has come only through the copying

that began under Charlemagne. These copyists also developed the
Carolingian script which has survived until today. Their books were works
of art and overall splendid masterpieces. (Ref. 33) The emperor died in 814,
five years after the realm had been swept by famine. (Ref. 213) The
Carolingian Dynasty immediately declined as the empire was divided by his
one surviving son among three grandsons - Pepin, Louis and Karl, all of
whom died within 8 years. Their successors were weak leaders and many
local wars broke out between rulers, nobles and church with resulting
recurrent partitions of the empire. Finally by the Treaty of Verdun (843) the
original empire was officially divided into three parts, with Lothair keeping
the title of emperor and a central area, extending from the Netherlands
almost to Naples. Charles the Bald got the western area and Ludwig the
eastern area and in this way France and Germany became dissociated. (Ref.
57) It was not originally a difference of race or temperament but a
difference of language and tradition. The western branch was assimilated by
the country-side Latin, which became French, while the Germanic group
had retained their original Germanic tongue. The Franks in north Germany
even differed also from the Swabians and south Germans. Ludwig actually
was the first king of Germany, but the artificial divisions of the empire were
still poorly arranged because they paid no heed to these growing regional
differences. The monstrous territory of Lotharingia (French - "Lorraine")
was to be disputed between France and Germany well up into the 20th
century. The Italian part was also a continued problem area, with
subsequent German emperors having to attempt to reconquer the region at
frequent intervals for centuries. Additional Notes

NOTE: Add Map 36: Division of Charlegmagne's Empire at Verdun in 843
Map taken from Reference 97.

As the old Frankish kingdom disintegrated in the early century, the separate
duchies previously present reappeared as independent political units. These
were the stem[footnote] duchies of Frisia (Lowlands), Saxony, Franconia
(along the Maine), Swabia, Thuringia (between the Weser and Elbe) and
Bavaria. These were based originally on ethnic unity and this particularism
made unification of Germany forever difficult. (Ref. 184)

From "Stamm", meaning "tribe"

In 857 there a serious outbreak of ergotism in which thousands of Germans
died, poisoned by their daily rye bread which contained a fungus producing
some 20 poisons (including LSD). The disease produced abdominal pain,
delirium, gangrene and sometimes death, or alternately it caused an acute
inflammation of the skin, driving people to insanity and giving it its
common name of "Holy fire". (Ref. 211) The only physicians present were
part of the monastic environment and much of their labor was devoted to
prayer, laying on of hands, exorcising, use of amulets, holy oil, relics of
saints and other elements of supernaturalism rather than to rational
procedures. (Ref. 125)

By treaty in 870 Germany was extended from the Rhine to the Elbe. The
limits between the Germans and the Slavs generally followed the Elbe
between the North Sea and the mountains of Bohemia. Although this line of
demarcation did not last for long, it has through the centuries assumed some
political, economic and social importance. As noted previously, to the west
of the Elbe is old Germany, to the east is new Germany. The latter became
the area of the Junkers, with large estates dominating a servile peasantry,
with a large Slavic element in the population. A skeleton of imperial power
continued even after Ludwig's death. The last of the direct Caroling ian line,
Karl (Charles) the Fat, abdicated in 887. Three weak kings filled the next
thirty year gap, until the rule was taken over in the next century by the
Saxon kings.

AUSTRIA

Charlemagne's "Ostmark", bounded by the rivers Enns, Raab and Drau,
with a fortress at Vienna, lasted until about 880, when the Frankish forces
were defeated by the Magyars who had occupied Hungary and then moved
into Austria. (Ref. 175)

HUNGARY

In the early century Hungary was lightly held by the Bulgar Khanate, but
near the end of the century when the Magyars were finally squeezed

entirely out of Russia by the Patzinaks (Pechnegi), they swept through the
upper Balkans and took over and settled Hungary. The "native" Szekels
were few and scattered and offered little resistance. The Magyars were
basically a Finnish people who had an infusion of Turkish blood which had
been added while they were living on the Don River and were joined by
three hordes of the Khazars from the Volga mouth. The Magyars were free
horsemen, living in clans and tribes and using slaves taken from among the
Slavs. They spoke the Ugric language of the Finno-Ugric group of Uralic
languages. Formerly it was erroneously thought that these people were
basically Mongolian or Hunnish, but this is not accurate and they came
originally from the Ural Mountains area, not farther east. In Asia, they were
called Ugri, from their Ugric language and from this has come our word
"ogre". (Ref. 137)

CZECHOSLAVAKIA

Like the rest of Central Europe this area was subject to Charlemagne's
religious wars early in the century. With fire and sword he preached the
Gospel to Saxons, Bohemians and down into Hungary. Later in 870,
Sviatopluk, a Moravian prince, united Moravia, Bohemia and Slovakia into
the Kingdom of Moravia and held against further German aggression. It
was during his reign that Cyril and Methodius brought Christianity of the
Byzantine variety to the region. In the last years of the century, however,
the German clergy redoubled its efforts and won back Bohemia and
Moravia for the Latin Church. (Ref. 119) The Czechs became dominant
over all the Bohemian tribes, while Slovakia came under Magyar rule. (Ref.
206, 222)

SWITZERLAND

In this 9th century part of what is now Switzerland was included in Swabia
and the rest was part of Transjurane Burgundy. (Ref. 137)

WESTERN EUROPE

SPAIN

Charlemagne conquered Catalonia in northeastern Spain but otherwise this
country remained politically as in the 8th century, about half or less
Christian and the remainder Moorish Moslem. The Christian princes lived
in the high, barren northern mountains and the Basques remained in the
central north by themselves, while the plains of Granada and Andalusia
were the home of the Moslems and the Jews. Agricultural poverty and
political disunity kept Christian Spain far behind its Moslem rival in the
south and its Frank rival in the north.

The Spanish Moslem rulers continued to be the last remnants of the
Omayyad house. Hakam I added Mamluk slaves to the royal guard and
continued to cruelly suppress all independent intellectual activity. His
successor, Abd-er-Rahman II, was more peaceful to his own people and
although his armies waged continuous warfare against the Christians,
Cordoba attained its greatest splendor. The second university in Europe
(Solerno was the first) was formed around the library of Khalif al-Hakim of
Cordoba. It is said that he collected 400,000 volumes (equal to about 20,000
modern books) and read them all, making comments on the fly leaves. The
mainstream of Greco-Roman learning thus came to Europe through Spain,
with commentaries by both Moslem and Jewish scholars. Cordoba had
paved streets, perhaps 500,000 inhabitants and 300 mosques. By about A.D.
900[footnote] paper mills had appeared in Spain. In the last half of the
century, however, prosperity lessened and there was much turmoil and
many local rebellions. (Ref. 49, 213, 8, 196)

This date is from The Times Atlas of World History, (Ref. 8) but Thomas
(Ref. 213) gives a later date at A.D. 1150

NOTE: Map of The Iberian Peninsula

PORTUGAL

As is apparent in the small map above, Portugal was not yet a separate
country but part of the province of Leon of Spain, ruled in greatest part by
Moors.

FRANCE

Please see the section on GERMANY, page 484, for details of the collapse
of Charlemagne's Empire. During the costly civil wars which followed that
collapse of the Frank kingdom, the expanding tribes of Scandinavia invaded
France in a new "barbarian" wave. All the cities of northern France were
sacked again and again. Tours was pillaged five times in the last half of the
century and Paris was hit twice and then burned on a third attack. In 859 a
Norse fleet entered the Mediterranean and raided towns from the south
along the Rhone. The Saracens had already taken Corsica and held most of
the French Mediterranean coast through the next century. The result of all
these raids and particularly those of the Vikings was a fragmentation of
public authority and a great upsurge of feudalism as a means of protection.
The peasant as a freeman virtually disappeared and society was polarized
between nobles and serfs. In addition, the descendants of the first
generations of French agents of the Carolingians were not as loyal as their
fathers and tended to identify with the particular interests of their own
localities at the expense of the Frankish kingdom. As noted above, however,
Charlemagne's Empire did not completely disintegrate until about 887 or
888 when it gave way to a large kingdom of "France" and a smaller
kingdom of Province in the south, while the Bretons still held their
northwest peninsula. (Ref. 8, 137) Additional Notes

The French language developed in this period. As early as 813
Charlemagne ordered sermons to be preached in lingua romana rustica,
acknowledging this new language, which was nascent French. The six cases
of classical Latin were merged into two cases, the predominant
morphological characteristic of "old French". Twenty-nine years later came
the first written text in French, a treaty known as the "Oath of Strasbourg"
between Carolingian princes. (Ref. 168) Sometime in this or the preceding
century a university was founded at Montpellier and it soon had a rabbinical

school of Spanish origin which taught grammar and later medicine. (Ref.
125)

THE NETHERLANDS AND BELGIUM

On the eve of the Viking period, this area was concerned with a growing
commerce in coastal markets called "wics", the greatest of which was
Dorestad (with others in England), dealing in supplies of furs, skins and
walrus tusks. (Ref. 8) In general, the Lowlands can be considered as a part
of the Frankish kingdom and France, at this period.

Frisia disappeared and the North Sea was controlled by no one until the
Danish chieftains became rulers of this and various large areas of Flanders
at the end of the century.

Additional Notes

BRITISH ISLES

Additional Notes

ENGLAND

Just before the era of the Viking invasions, participating with Dorestad as a
"wic" market, was Hamwic, later to become Southampton. Early in the
century Offa, of Mercia, sometimes known as "King of the English",
bargained and dealt with Charlemagne apparently almost as an equal. But
then the Danish Viking attacks began, first on the island of Sheppey in 835,
continuing for thirty years of disturbance and destruction. Usually 30 to 300
Danish ships left home in the spring, raided during the summer and returned
home to Denmark with the booty before winter. (Ref. 43) After A.D. 835
hardly a year passed in which there was no reference in the Anglo-Saxon
chronicle as to Viking attacks on England. (Ref. 237) The year 865 was a
turning point when that autumn a great Viking army landed in East Anglia,

under Ivor the Boneless, to stay. In the meantime, however, King Egbert of
Wessex had united most of the southern kingdoms under his control,
including Wessex, the Cornish Welsh and the southern parts of both Mercia
and Northumbria. (A.D. 829). After the Danes had taken the middle 2/3 of
England by about 898, it remained for King Alfred, the Saxon, successor to
Egbert, to finally defeat the Danes and confine them to the northeastern part
of the country in an area to be called the "Danelaw". Alfred's victory
involved the use of a great fleet to meet the invaders' reinforcements at sea
before they could land. Payments of money apparently helped in this
confinement, however, and even after their defeat the Danes kept their own
customs and laws while living nominally under the English king. Many
Danes later moved south and became important in English government and
the church. (Ref. 43, 137) Additional Notes

SCOTLAND

Thousands of second generation Anglo-Saxons, now called "English", were
driven into Scotland by the Danish invasion and this resulted in a strong
influx of Anglo- Saxon blood in the Scottish people. In the meantime, there
was a Norse invasion of the islands and the north and west shores of
Scotland and the main Pictish army was destroyed along with their last
king, Eoghann. Kenneth Mac Alpin, alleged descendant of forty tribal
kings, took this opportunity about 842 to unite the Picts and Scots, forming
the small mountain kingdom of Alba (Albainn). After that union the Pictish
culture disappeared. It is said that Kenneth murdered seven earls of
Dalriada, kinsmen who might have laid a claim to his new throne. (Ref.
137, 170)

The Viking raids became a terrifying experience to the people of Scotland,
as in other parts of Britain. They called those from Denmark the "Black
Gentiles" and those from Norway the "White Gentiles". Between 795 and
806 lona was wasted three times and the loot taken was extensive. But the
Norse made settlements, too. Norwegian jarls ruled the Shetlands, Orkneys
and the Caithness. Ketil, sent by Norwegian King Harold Fairhair to the
Hebrides, established himself as king. In the hills of Galloway, on the north
coast of the Solway Firth, the Norse intermarried with the earlier settlers,

creating a fiery and quarrelsome people called the Gallgaels. By the end of
the century Kenneth Mac Alpin and his successors, a brother, two sons and
two grandchildren had died and were apparently buried on Iona. (Ref. 170)

IRELAND

The Vikings raided Ireland and established some temporary Norse
kingdoms, including Cork and Dublin, the latter established in 841 by Olaf,
a Norwegian prince. This kingdom lasted some three hundred years and
served as a base for further Norse raids. In addition to Cork and Dublin -
Wicklow, Arklow and Wexford were all Viking towns. Irish monasteries
were especially hard hit and destroyed, probably because these were of ten
the only real communities and center of food storage. Actually the Irish
themselves at- tacked more monasteries than the Vikings ever did.
Conmacnoise, on the upper Shannon, was hit by native Irish at least twenty-
seven times to the Vikings' eight. Three times it was sacked by Feidlimid
mac Crimthainn, abbot-king of Munster, who plundered many of Ireland's
greatest monasteries. Knowth, on the east side of the present Irish Republic,
on the River Boyne, had become in recent centuries a site of importance,
apparently as the royal residence of the Gaelic kings of Northern Brege.
(Ref. 8, 194, 88) Additional Notes

WALES

In Wales, pirate attacks occurred from Normandy until Rhodri the Great
drove them off and gave the country a vigorous dynasty.

SCANDINAVIA

How did these Viking people suddenly leap onto the stage of European
history to dominate it for some three centuries, when previous to about 800,
they had been a rather obscure, somewhat barbaric group? The reasons for
their domination at this time are probably several but, at least included, is
the fact that these people had developed a mastery of ship-building and had

nautical skills. In addition, a population explosion had occurred in their
Scandinavian homelands as a result of warmer temperatures than usual
(Little Climatic Optimum) with a resulting abundant food supply. Some
have speculated that the raids, in part, were in retaliation for Charlemagne's
and other Christians' persecution (Ref. 79) At home in Scandinavia there
were no striking changes, barring the population increase, to herald the
Viking era. The social structure conformed to a norm characteristic of
Europe. At the bottom of the scale was the slave (proel[footnote]), who
might be anyone from a bankrupt local to a prisoner of war. The son of a
slave was also a slave. Next in line were the free peasants (karls), not
usually entirely free, but doing service to a proprietor.

This date is from Heyerdahl (Ref. 95), but McEvedy (Ref. 137) gives the
date A.D. 885

Some were craftsmen, soldiers or peddlers. The top of the chain was the
aristocrat (jarl) or chieftain, who was basically a warrior. During the Viking
Age this class began to hold land from the king in a proto-feudal manner.
The basic livelihood was from the land farming, cattle, horses, sheep and
goats. (Ref. 237) Additional Notes

The raiders, variously called Norsemen, Vikings or Varangians (in Russia),
came from many parts of Scandinavia and were strong, ruthless, blond,
Teutonic pirates, but in addition to raiding they also colonized and settled.
They were organized with a complex law, had the ability to write and had a
vigorous artistic style. (Ref. 45, 17) The Atlantic Vikings were chiefly
Saxons, Angles and the kindred Danes and Norwegians, who sailed in long,
black galleys, making very little use of sails. Their ships were long and
slim, built of oak with symmetrical ends, long, true keel and overlapping
wood planks with shell-shapes that allowed them to land in very shallow
water. Each one did have a sail amidship, a side rudder and as many as 34
pairs of oars. Those Scandinavians who stormed down through Russia were
chiefly Swedish. (Ref. 79)

NORWAY

At home in Norway in the first half of the century there were some 31
principalities, some of which were united by Halfdan the Black about 850.
Then by 8721 all Norway was conquered and united by Halfdan's son,
Harold Fairhair, who reigned with his Queen Gyda for almost 60 years. We
have mentioned that walrus ' tusks were in great demand in commerce in
this period. A Norwegian, Ottar, sailed clear north to the White Sea in
search of this sea animal. Kaupang was a thriving trade town in southern
Norway from which Norwegians sailed to Iceland and later to Greenland
and America. (Ref. 8) Additional Notes

SWEDEN

Although we have little certain information about the local political
organization in Sweden at this 9th century, we do know that because of the
prosperous commercial trade from the Arab world and the Russian plains,
Sweden had many rich towns like Birka, on an island in the middle of Lake
Malar. Additional Notes

DENMARK

Early in the century the Danes seem to have been disorganized and
dependent on Sweden, which apparently had the oldest monarchy of the
three basic Scandinavian countries, although details are unknown. By the
end of the century, however, Denmark had unity of its own under King
Gorm and Thyra the Beautiful, his queen. The social order in Denmark was
based on family discipline, economic cooperation and religious pagan
beliefs. Hedeby, on the neck of the Juteland peninsula, was a thriving trade
town and great commercial center. (Ref. 43) A recent reconstruction of a
Viking house from Hedeby shows it had been made of wooden staves or
wattle, plastered with mud and roofed with reeds or turf. There was a fire
hearth in the middle of the main room, with iron cooking pots, upright
looms for weaving, soap-stone lamps and bun-shaped smoothing irons for
laundry. There was a central authority with public works and apparently
extensive financial resources in the village. (Ref. 79) Additional Notes

FINLAND

The Finns were now quite well established in what we now call Finland but
the armed Swedish merchants overran them on their way to Russia and they
dominated the Finnish peasants throughout this period.

OVERSEAS SCANDINAVIAN CENTERS

Iceland, which may have been touched still earlier by Norse seamen and
perhaps Irish, was at least re-discovered by Norwegians and Danes about
A.D. 860 and settlers began to migrate there to live by 870, with settlement
completed within two generations Wilson (Ref. 237) says that the first three
Viking voyages of exploration into the Atlantic were by a Swede, Gardar
Svavarson and two Norwegians, Naddod and Fiokki Vilgerdeson. (Ref. 8,
237) Additional Notes

EASTERN EUROPE

SOUTHERN BALTIC AREA

The Baltic area also received the raids of the Scandinavian Vikings and the
Balts and Baltic Slavs all fell under the rule of a Swedish minority of armed
merchants. About the end of the century the Lendizi tribe of Slavs began to
dominate the Goplani and formed alliances with still other tribes in a
coalition known as the Polani. Excavations at Mietlica, Poland, show iron
and glass which were apparently imported in exchange for food stuffs,
leather, wool and perhaps salt. This town, near the Notec River and Lake
Goplo was probably a minor commercial center. There is evidence of cows,
pigs, sheep, horses, domestic chickens, ducks and various wild game. (Ref.
244)

RUSSIA

Early in the century the eastern Slavs pushed eastward from Europe into the
woodlands of central Russia, while the nomadic horsemen (Pechnegs and
Magyars) rode westward across the southern steppe. (Ref. 8) Northern
Russia had the same fate as the Baltic areas in that the Swedes established
principalities at Novorod and Kiev in the heart of Slav territory, as well as a
Black Sea stronghold at Tmutorokan (A.D. 825), challenging the Khazar
trade route from the Don River to Constantinople. This was just south of the
Magyar territory and just west of the Khazar Khanate, which still occupied
most of the Caucasus. To the north of the Khazars were the Volga Bulgars.
The trade route between the various Swedish principalities made a loosely
bound commercial and political empire called "Ros" or "Rus", the origin of
which is still uncertain. (See page 465). The Swedes (called Varangians in
the next century) did not take their women with them and they married
locally, thus becoming Slavicized in 1 1/2 centuries, even in the case of the
ruling, and princely families. These Rus spoke a Slavic language and part of
their culture was Finnish. Excavations at Staraje Ladoga, Kiev and
Smolensk have shown some Scandinavian material, but at the first named
city (the only place where 9th century levels have been reached) the
buildings seem to have been Finnish, rather than Scandinavian. The Swedes
were tradesmen, not craftsmen and their presence in Russia was certainly
influential, even if not completely dominating. (Ref. 237) Additional Notes

Eventually Kiev became the center of this enterprise and its rulers, the
Norse Rurik and his descendants, may be said to be the founders of the
Russian state. This Kiev principality embraced nearly all of the eastern
Slavonic tribes. This group made six assaults on Constantinople within the
next two centuries but in spite of these occasional wars, trade flourished
between Kiev and Byzantium. Gradually Russia accepted a Slavonic liturgy
and alphabet and the Greek Church. The Russian Slavs were described by
the Byzantines as rough and primitive although musical, honest, hospitable,
fierce in battle and fond of hot baths. A major offensive against Byzantium
in 860 was led by the Varangian Askold with Norse cavalry and probably
Slav infantry. Askold's Kievan area then began to assume aspects of a true
state. In about 880 Oleg, from the northern area, captured Kiev and first
united the Swedish-Slav principalities. (Ref. 137, 213, 222)

In the meantime Patzinak (Pechneg) Turks had migrated from Central Asia
to wedge themselves between the Volga Bulgars and the Khazars, squeezing
the Magyars from the east as the Oleg Russian state pushed down from the
north. They ended the Khazar control of the Russian steppe, although the
latter remained important in that area until the next century. (Ref. 137) The
Magyars absorbed considerable Turkish blood from the Kavar branch of the
Khazars. (Ref. 211)

In the far east of European Russia there was a Swedish market at Bolgar on
the middle Volga where Muslims were eager to acquire furs and slaves
which the Swedes could get in the northern forests. (Ref. 224) It was thus
that after about 882 Russia was subjected to powerful external influences
for almost 500 years - first from the Vikings from the north, then from
Byzantium with its Christianity and the Arabs with Islam from the south
and southeast and finally, as we shall see later, by Mongols from the east.

Note:The Danish King Horik gave northern Germany much trouble in this
century, destroying Hamburg in 845 and attacking up the Elbe in 851 and
Bremen in 858. The valleys of the Rhine and Meuse were relatively
immune from Viking attacks, except for one major one in 863, apparently
because Lothar and Lothar II of the middle kingdom, let the Vikings have
the estuaries of those rivers. The Danish leader Harald and his nephew
Roric were so treated, with Roric getting Dorestadt. (Ref. 501)

Note:After Louis' death Viking raiders sailed up the Seine and by 841
towns along that river paid very large amounts of silver for the sake of
peace. In 845 an attack on Paris was prevented by the payment of 7,000
pounds of silver. In the next 20 years every major river in western Frankia
was exploited by one or more Viking fleets. Soon they were based in the
Loire and each year moved farther up the valley. This was the main area of
Viking activity for 25 years, probably because of the weaknesses and
rivalry of Louis' sons, Charles and Louis. In 862 Charles made systematic
efforts to fortify at least the heart of his kingdom. After the death of
Charles the Bald in 877 and then his son two years later, there was much

political confusion and the Vikings returned with a large army and fleet. At
one time 200 ships, loaded with prisoners, returned home to Scandinavia.
Those Vikings who settled in Normandy did not speak a Scandinavian
language for long and now there is no trace in Norman names. (Ref. 301)

Note:In 1810 Charlemagne ordered fleets to be built and stationed at
Ghent and Boulogne, in response to Scandinavian attacks on Frisia. It was
later, when the Frankish empire was divided, that defenses were neglected
and the Viking raids really started. The Dane Godfred was granted land in
the Rhine estuary, to proteCt against other raiders, but Godfred was killed
in 885 and afterwards there was very little trace left of the Vikings in the
Netherlands. In Belgium a series of circular forts were built along the coast
on each side of the Scheldt estuary, probably in the last years of Louis’
reign. These defenses may have sufficiently thwarted the Vikings that they
were diverted to start their serious attacks on England. (Ref. 301)

Note:The essentially empty Faroes Islands were settled by Vikings, thus
actually extending Europe. (Ref. 301)

Note:In 809 Vikings captured a member of the papal mission
accompanying Eardwulf, King of Northumbria, back to England. The
Vikings raided usually in small bands and were identified by their leaders,
such as the armies of Olaf, Sven or Knut, rather than as Norwegians,
Danes, etc., although the English called them all "Danes". Actually
Norwegians attacked the north and west British Isles while Danes assaulted
the southern North Sea and channel coasts. The first attacks were small,
involving 3 to 15 ships. Later, when 60 or more ships were involved they
probably came from new bases, such as in the Hebrides. In the years after
866 many raiding Scandinavians, faced with better defences on the
continent and finding little left to plunder, turned again to England. In 865
they took East Anglia and in 866, taking advantage of a local civil war in

Northumbria, they conquered York. Their army, led by several kings, then
took eastern Mercia but was stopped by Alfred at Wessex. The Viking
leader, Guthrum, then retired to rule East Anglia. (Ref. 301)

Forward to Europe: A.D. 901 to 1000

Note:The first Viking settlements in Ireland, including Dublin, were in
841. They got control of all the islands around Ireland and then made
inland raids from those bases. After 847 the Irish began to win some
victories and drove them out temporarily. After 850 there were only 5
attacks on churches in the remainder of the century. There were four
possible factors in that situation: (1) The Viking bases were susceptible to
counter-attack; (2) some churches paid tribute; (3) Frankia offered better
opportunities to accumulate wealth; and (4) the Danes first hit Ireland in
851 and there followed some violent conflicts between them and the
Norwegians, so that there was little energy left for local devastation. (Ref.
301)

Note:Regarding the slaves, we should note that many of them were
Christians. There were several centers for long distance trade - Kaupang in
Vestfold, Norway, Hedeby in Denmark, Birka in Sweden and Trusco and
Straraja Ladoga as Swedish centers in Russia. "Cogs" were cargo boats,
developed perhaps in this century and they had the characteristic Viking
profile, with a sharp angle between the keel and the stem. (Ref. 301)

Note:Ottar's North Cape trip was primarily a search for walrus ivory and
hides and to survey the land. He encountered the Lapps who gave him
much in the way of tribute, including 600 tame reindeer, skins, feathers,
whale-bone and ship ropes from whale and seal hides. (Ref. 301)

Note:Sweden probably had several kings at this time. One was surely King
Olef, but his power was limited and subject to two assemblies in Birka.
Kings were military leaders. In 829 once such king asked the German
emperor to send a preacher to Birka. In their attacks along the Baltic coast,
the Swedes obtained large amounts of silver that was coming up from
Transoxiana. (Ref. 301)

Note:The Danes of this period lived chiefly in southern Jutland. Frankish
royal annals say that the Danish King Godfred removed merchants from
Reric, an unidentified Slav territory, to his own lands. This was perhaps
part of a fortification program which he built along the River Eider. The
early Danish and Norwegian historians have much conflict in their writings
of the early Danish political and military affairs and one must be somewhat
dubious of all. The Danish historian, Sven Aggesen, makes a great deal of
the activities of Queen Thyri, even stating that she conned the German
emperor into paying her a vast sum and giving her credit for having the
Danevirke built. We have noted previously, however, that this wall was
constructed in the preceding century. (Ref. 301)

Note:The Vikings were offered spacious opportunities in Iceland and about
870 they began to arrive in a steady stream, both from Scandinavia proper
and from their bases in the British Isles. (Ref. 301)

Note:The Bulgars (also Bulghars) along the middle Volga acted as
intermediaries for trade with the various Finnish tribes, such as the "Ves",
living to the east of Lake Onega, and the Scandinavian "Rus" around Kiev.
The Karelians also collected furs in the Kola peninsula and even
encountered the Norwegian Ottar there. There is little doubt that
Scandinavians known as "Rus" established themselves in Russia in the first
half of this 9th century, originally with the object of gathering arctic furs
and slaves to sell down along the Volga. By the middle of the century

Rurik controlled several bases in northern Russia at Izborsk, Beloozero and
Novgorod. Then one group, led by Askold and Dir, went south and seized
Kiev. They possibly attacked Constantinople in 860. Rurik died about 880
and was succeeded by a kinsman, Oleg, who overthrew Askold and Dir
and became Prince of Kiev. He forced adjacent Slavonic tribes to pay
tribute. (Ref. 301)

Europe: A.D. 901 to 1000

EUROPE (Beginning the age of feudalism, chivalry and the rise
of the German monarchy)

Back to Europe: A.D. 801 to 900

Europe's history now became a maze of alliances, treacheries, claims and
acquisitions. Historians usually consider the 10th century almost as dark
and barbarous as the 7th, but this is only from the political and written word
viewpoint. 10th century art was as splendid and technically skilful as that of
any other age. (Ref. 116) Heavy iron horse-shoes which allowed hooves to
tolerate wet soil had been brought into Europe from the east in the last
century and by A.D. 1,000 they were cheap enough to be afforded by
peasants; but still lacking an adequate yoke, horses could still not be used
for plowing, harrowing nor even heavy hauling. (Ref. 213)

SOUTHERN EUROPE

Cotton reached the Mediterranean world via the Arabs, from India. (Ref.
160)

EASTERN MEDITERRANEAN ISLANDS

Byzantium troops took Candia, the northern Cretan city, from the Turks in
961 and the city was ruthlessly sacked. By 1,000 Genoese colonists had
appeared on the same island. Other Mediterranean isles remained
unmolested in the Byzantium Empire. (Ref. 41, 48)

GREECE

A part of Byzantium

UPPER BALKANS

The Bulgar King Simeon, educated at Constantinople as a monk, was the
first of his people to take the title of Czar. He extended his rule to Serbia
and the Adriatic Sea and engaged in wars with Constantinople and Greece.
The conversion of the Bulgarians to Christianity did not prevent their
monarch from aspiring to the throne at Constantinople and he tried to
civilize his people with Greek literature. After his death the country was
weakened by civil strife and heretics converted about half of the population
to pacifism and communism. Serbia recovered its independence in 931 but
lost it again to the Bulgarian Samuel in 989.

But we are a little ahead of our story. In 963 the prince of Kiev, with
Byzantine help, had annexed the eastern section of Bulgaria, which was in
chaos at the time. By 969, however, led by Chichmanides, the western
section managed to break away from the Kievan state and form an
independent kingdom in the regions later to be known as Macedonia,
Albania, the district of Moravia and some regions of Vidin and Sofia. Under
King Samuel, Macedonia became the cultural center of the realm. Four
years after Samuel's death the Byzantines had annexed his realm, however,
and the First Bulgarian Empire had ended. (Ref. 206)

With regard to Serbia, Chaslav tried to unite the various mountain clans of
Serbs in mid-century when they were somewhat out from under the
Bulgarian yoke, but in the end the attempt was not successful.

ITALY

At the end of the last century there had been considerable confusion
concerning who was "king of Italy" and the Holy Roman Emperor. The title
changed hands repeatedly among the late Carolingian heirs. Arnulf,
illegitimate son of Carloman, grandson of Louis the German, was crowned
king of Italy in 894 and then emperor in 896. Louis the Child was elected
king by the magnates in 900. Upon his death in 911 Conrad, Duke of
Franconia was elected in the same way. Italy was without effective native
rule throughout this 10th century. In approximately the same period there
were still others claiming to be the emperor. There was Berengar1,

grandson of Louis the Pious, Guido of Spoleto, Lambert his son, and Louis
of Provence, who was crowned emperor in 915. In the Germanic portion of
the old Charlemagne Empire, King Henry I, called the Fowler, began his
reign as the first Saxon king, but he avoided ecclesiastical coronation as
emperor. But the "Middle Kingdom" of the three-way split, which included
northern Italy, was weak and soon fell to the stronger Germany as Otto I the
Great, succeeded Henry. After some difficulties with the pope, he was
eventually crowned as Holy Roman Emperor in 962 and claimed all central
and northern Italy except the papal territory of Rome and the Sabine region.
In the papal state confusion had reigned for some time, with the landed
aristocracy dominating. Marozia, mistress of Pope Sergius III[footnote],
controlled the Curia, imprisoned Pope John XI and took command of Rome
until her son, Alberic II, could assume power.

Marozia was also the mother of Sergius' son John, later Pope John XI. (Ref.
119)

In A.D. 950 the Mediterranean was almost entirely a "Muslim lake" and
such trade as there was between east and west was in the hands of the
Byzantine cities of Italy, such as Bari, Amalfi, Gaeta and Salerno and of
course the independent Venice. Northern Italy was converted into a
crisscross of irrigation canals for shipping goods. The Moslems were finally
dislodged from their base on the Ligurian coast. (Ref. 213, 8)

The written Italian language can be said to date from A.D. 960. The old
Latin final vowels were retained, but only one case.

CENTRAL EUROPE

GERMANY

While political fragmentation continued west of the Rhine, in the east a new
Saxon Dynasty under Henry I and his son, Otto I the Great, extended
influence over the German duchies and conquered the northern kingdom of
Italy so that this Ottonian Empire emerged as an equal of Byzantium. By
925 this Saxon Dynasty had regained some territory from France, defeated

the Danes and brought Bohemia and Moravia and the Elbe-Oder Slavs
under their wing. Otto I married a daughter of Edward[footnote] of England
and this dynasty and the related Salic-Frankish Dynasty then ruled
Germany until the middle of the 12th century and led through a female
branch to the Hohenstaufen emperors to follow that. The social structure
was characterized by the political and economic supremacy of the dukes
and counts, bishops and abbots, as representatives of the secular and
ecclesiastical nobility.

Alfred's son but not designated as Edward I

Early in his reign Otto gave most of Bavaria to his brother, Duke Henry.
Germany was soon invaded by the Magyars from their bases in Hungary,
but Otto finally defeated them at Lechfeld, near Augsburg, in 955,
recovering the eastern Bavarian march and laying the foundation for the
future Austria. The Magyar leaders were executed. (Ref. 8) It was after
these battles that Otto invaded Italy and was finally crowned "Holy Roman
Emperor" by Pope John XII, in 962, with central and northern Italy
becoming an appanage of the German crown. This predominance of the
German monarchy and the virtual eclipse of the French was a striking
feature of the 10th century in Europe. Otto, with the help of his brother
Bruno, Archbishop of Cologne, began a cultural revival. Late in life he
learned to read Latin, but not to speak it. His court literary circle included
Irish and English monks and learned Greeks and Italians. He did have some
further trouble with Rome but did get his son coronated as Otto II and
married to Theophano, daughter of the Greek emperor, Romanus II. Otto II
(973-983) took five years to put down a revolt involving the Duke of
Bavaria and Boleslav of Bohemia and then had to repulse an attempted
Danish invasion. His infant son, Otto II began to rule in 983 under the
influence of his brilliant mother, Theophano. As a young adult, in two
expeditions to Italy at the end of the century Otto III decapitated Pope
Crescentius II, deposed Pope John XVI and installed Pope Sylvester II. He
then settled down in Rome, beginning a theatrical restoration of the
splendors of the city, and alienating the populace. He died without heirs and
was buried at his request beside Charlemagne, at Aachen. (Ref. 119)

AUSTRIA

In the first half of the century this area was controlled chiefly by the
Magyars but after their defeat by King Otto in A.D. 955, the southeastern
territories were given to Leopold of Babenberg as a reward for his help in
crushing a Bavarian revolt. The Babenberg Dynasty then ruled Austria for
the next 270 years, although nominally subject to the Holy Roman Emperor.
In A.D. 996 the word "Ostarrichi" appeared for the first time in a document
of the emperor. The word simply means "eastern realm".

HUNGARY

The Magyars, who dominated and populated Hungary, raided far and wide
between A.D. 937 and 955, going over all central Europe and to Orleans
and Tours in France, as well as south to Nimes and then down Italy to the
tip of the heel, but they did not settle and the disruption was short-lived.
(Ref. 8) After they were defeated by the German Otto in 955 they took up
Christianity of the Latin variety, as they were afraid of Byzantium.
Throughout all, however, they retained their own Turko-Finnic (Magyar)
language.

On the political scene, Arpad, who had led the Magyars into Hungary in
about 907, was followed eventually by a great grandson, Duke Geisa, who
established friendly relations with the Ottonian court and allowed some
missionary activity from them. Geisa (also Geza) and his more famous son,
Stephen (997-1038), welded the Magyars into a kingdom. Stephen, whose
original name was Vajk, before his baptism, married a Bavarian princess
and in A.D. 1,001 was crowned by the pope as King Stephen of
Hungary[footnote] (Ref. 119)

Stephen was canonized in 1083. (Ref. 119)

CZECHOSLOVAKIA

The Magyars of Hungary spent the opening years of the century destroying
the Empire of Great Moravia. (Ref. 137) The creation of Bohemia (and
Poland) by the Premyslid Dynasty was founded on agricultural
development, suppression of tribal differences in spite of many independent

tribal aristocracies and the influence of the Christian church. When
Bohemia was early threatened by the Magyars, Miesko I made his country a
vassal of Germany and then Bohemia emerged as a stable unit after 929
under Boleslav of the Premyslid line. (Ref. 8) Boleslav II founded the
Bishopric of Prague, which resulted in the final conversion of the entire
area, including Poland and Hungary, to Latin Christianity. Later in the
century Bohemia became subject to the Polish ruler, as will be noted under
EASTERN EUROPE, this chapter.

Lest we get carried away by the noble concept of kings and queens, nobles
and bishops in this area of Europe, we should realize that these people were
in many respects still fairly primitive and that cannibalism was not
unknown. Some bands sold human meat labeled "pork" or "mutton", and
this practice was to continue for centuries. (Ref. 211)

SWITZERLAND

Switzerland had no separate existence at this time with its territory split
between the domains of the Saxon Dynasty and the rulers of Burgundy. The
relatively inaccessible Burgundy area was raided by Vikings, Moslems and
finally Magyars, all within about 50 years. (Ref. 137)

NOTE: 38: The Holy Roman Empire And The Norman Kingdom in South
Italy

Map taken from Reference 97.

WESTERN EUROPE

At the beginning of this 1 Oth century the map of western Europe, in part as
a result of Viking raids, was a mosaic of intricate, interlacing counties,
communities, principalities and lordships, all part of the feudal system. By
the second half of the century the Viking raids had diminished and western
Europe recovered rapidly. The heavy mold-board plow came into general
use and made a great increase in agriculture possible, as drainage was

obtained. Four oxen and long fields were required for this type of plow.
While the mer- chants of the other civilization of Eurasia were primarily
caterers to the tastes of their social superiors and were accustomed to
regulation and taxation from above in the "command" system, which we
mentioned at the beginning of the chapter, the aggressive, ruthless and self-
reliant ethos of western European merchants was profoundly different. The
distinctive characteristics of subsequent western history arise largely from
this fact. (Ref. 8, 139)

SPAIN AND PORTUGAL

Garcia, king of Leon, began an expansion eastward, building numerous
castles in the area later to be known as Castile. The chiefly Berber armies of
the Spanish Omayyad Caliphate periodically devastated the Christian
kingdoms of both Leon and Navarre (Basque territory) but the Christian
kings paid tribute and thus survived to eventually return the honors and
attack the south. When this did occur, one reason was that sheep, which
were Vital to the economy of northern Spain, had to be taken south to winter
pasture in the region held by the Arabs. Famines occurred in 915 and 929,
probably due to the disease "rust" on wheat. (Ref. 137, 211)

In the Moslem area of the south the great city of Cordoba had 700 mosques,
3 public baths, a palace with 400 halls and rooms and a library with
400,000 books, as we have previously noted. This famed library continued
to draw poets and scholars from all over the Moslem Empire. Abul Kasim,
of Cordoba, wrote the first illustrated book of surgery, named Al-Tasrif,
which included descriptions of lithotomy, tracheotomy and thyroidectomy,
among other procedures. Eastern Islam carried sugar cane to Spain and to
Madeira and the Canaries, where later it became an important industry.

The Jews of Cordoba lavished much money to draw men of Jewish law and
letters to the city in an attempt to establish a Jewish rebirth politically and
culturally. The most famous Jew of this era was the physician and
politician, Hasdai ibn Shaprut, famed as a healer who translated medical
works of the Greeks into Arabic, but he was also secretary and ambassador
to Caliph Abd-er Rahman III (912-961), greatest of the Moslem rulers in

Spain. He was the son of a Frankish concubine and a grandson of a Basque
princess. Hakam II, caliph from 961 to 976, was overthrown by a
bureaucrat first minister, Al Mansur, who became a dictator. After his death,
the caliph deteriorated. (Ref. 2, 49, 196)

FRANCE AND NETHERLANDS AND BELGIUM

For most of this century in the west Frank kingdom of France there was a
gradual decrease of royal power and the development of a strong feudalism,
chiefly be- cause of the competition for the crown by the Carolingian and
Robertian houses. The Carolingians kept control early, although Charles II],
ruling from Laon was the last one with truly effective power. Viking,
Magyar, and Moslem assaults all contributed to the royal downfall, as
Charles III, called Charles the Simple, was unable to expel the northmen
from the mouth of the Seine. In 911 he finally had to give the Viking leader,
Rollo, all of Normandy in exchange for Rollo's baptism and oath of fealty.
Actually the Viking chief took the oath lightly and filled up Normandy with
Scandinavian immigrants, chiefly Danes. Although most historians have
labeled Rollo (also Rolf) a Norwegian, Lauring (Ref. 117) says that he was
of Danish royal family origin. The last of the Carolingian kings, at least in
name, was Louis V and then Hugh Capet of the old Robertian House of
Burgundy was elected king and started the new Capetian Dynasty in 987.
France was now an independent kingdom, no longer subject to the Holy
Roman Empire and so recognized by Otto III as a reward for the ceding of
Lorraine to the Germans. Capet could speak no German and was the first
French-speaking king. Indicative of the situation throughout most of
Europe, France, even as a rather privileged country, still suffered 10 general
famines in this century. (Ref. 117, 160, 119, 260)

BRITISH ISLES

ENGLAND AND WALES

The 10th century in England saw a rebirth of monastic life and learning and
the beginning of native English literature. Alfred's son Edward (899-924)
and grandson Athelston (or Ethelstan) (924-939) carried on the fighting on
the frontier, making inroads into Daneslaw and finally conquering almost
all of it. The last Scandinavian king of York was Eric Bloodaxe, who was
expelled in A.D. 954. As the Danelaw was absorbed, the shire system was
extended to it with the old Danish boroughs as a nucleus. The old clan
organization was superseded by a quasi-feudal system whereby each man
had a lord who was responsible for him at law. The great earldoms began to
appear. England, as we know it today, began then to take shape as the
boundary between England and Scotland was set at Tweed and Edgar was
coronated as king of England in Bath in 973. When Edgar was only 15
years of age, however, he was assassinated in order to make way for
Aethelred. (Ref. 8, 301)

For awhile the English kings got homage also from the Welsh and there was
stability across the island. In about 980, however, the Vikings attacked
again and the new Saxon king, Aethelred the Unready, failed to meet the
challenge of the professional Viking army under Sweyn Forkbeard. Both
Norwegians and Danes were involved in these attacks at the end of the
century. Toynbee (Ref. 220) feels that these attacks actually stimulated the
development of the definitive kingdom of England (Ref. 8, 43, 220, 119)
Additional Notes

SCOTLAND

King Constantine II, grandson of Kenneth Mac Alpin, along with kings of
Strathclyde and Northumbria, accepted vassalage to Athelstan when he was
the English king. Constantine then abdicated in favor of his cousin,
Malcolm, who became the 8th king of the Alpin line, most of them having
been exterminated by murder. Acknowledging that he was the English
king's vassal, he was ceded Strathclyde, although he had to terrorize the
people there and burn their towns to get their acknowledgment. But
Malcolm was also soon dead from poison and six more Alpins were king
before the century was over, all meeting violent deaths. (Ref. 170)

IRELAND

The Norwegian kingdom continued to control Dublin and various northern
islands and in addition the Vikings established Limerick about A.D. 920.
The native Irish remained amazingly quiescent during this century. (Ref.
211) Additional Notes

SCANDINAVIA

As this century progressed the Scandinavians pretty well stopped their
piracy and replaced it with European trade. In their written language, the
runic characters were now generally abandoned as Christianity brought
additional literacy to the area through a handful of English and Saxon
missionaries. It was only at that time that the various Scandinavian states
finally emerged as organized and even aggressive entities. (Ref. 137)

NORWAY

Haakon the Good, educated at the court of England's King Athelston, tried
to introduce Christianity in Norway but made no headway and this religion
had to wait for Olaf, son of Tryggve, as he became king in 995 and made
the country Christian by the sword. Olaf, himself, remained polygamous.
Shortly thereafter in A.D. 1,000 Norway was conquered by Sweden and
Denmark, in the first of many inter-Scandinavian wars.

In the battle of Svolder, Olaf was defeated while sailing in his great Viking
ship with 34 rowing seats[footnote] and in apparent remorse, he jumped
into the sea and was drowned. (Ref. 34)

This was the ship "Long Serpent", which may have held 200 warriors and
rowers and may have been the largest Viking ship ever built. (Ref. 34)

Weaponsmith was one of the most admired skills of all Northmen and a
superb group of tools found in a Norwegian weaponsmith's grave of this
century attests to the wealth and status of such craftsmanship. Vikings also
carved jet, amber and bone into small ornaments. (Ref. 79)

SWEDEN

There is less information available about Sweden in these years than from
the other northern countries but we do know that it was gradually united
under the kings Uppland towards the end of the century and that Olaf
Skotkonung gained control about A.D. 1000, became a Christian and
ordered his subjects to do the same, by baptism. (Ref. 8)

DENMARK

King Gorm ruled the major part of Denmark during the first decades of the
century, followed by his son Harold Bluetooth. Otto of Germany marched
up into Jutlarld and then marched back without actually gaining any land,
but Harold saw the possible danger from the Germans and combined the
various smaller kingdoms of the Danes under his one rule, advising them to
stay at home and protect their homeland. The Viking raider element in the
population did not like this advice and they chose Harold's son, Sweyn
Forkbeard, as their leader. Father and son battled at sea (as was the custom)
with neither winning but Harold was mysteriously killed that night. It was
Sweyn, then, who later battled and defeated the Norwegian King Olav
Tryggveson at sea. Sweyn sent fleets westward for years, extracting the
Danegeld (a type of "protection" racket) from Aethelred of England. (Ref.
34, 117) Additional Notes

FINLAND

No special change in Finland in this century.

OVERSEAS SCANDINAVIAN CENTERS: ICELAND AND GREENLAND

By 934 Iceland was as thickly settled as it would be until World War 11,
with perhaps 50,000 to 60,000 people and a great literature accumulated. In
A.D. 1,000 the Allthing (Parliament) formally adopted Christianity. One-
half the people in Iceland were from Bergen, Norway, having fled from the

tyranny of Harold Fairhair in the previous century. Sailing from Iceland, but
originally from Norway, Bjarno Herjolfsson visited the coast of North
America in 985 and a Norwegian colony was established on Greenland by
Thorwald and his son Eric the Red of Jaeder, Norway about A.D. 1,000.
(Ref. 237)

EASTERN EUROPE

SOUTHERN BALTIC AREA

Some six tribes in Poland were finally united early in this period under the
domination of the Polani Slavs with Meiszko I as the first historical ruler of
the Polish people. The German Otto had previously subdued many Polish
dukes, so in order to avoid further conquest by the Germans, Mieszko
placed Poland under the Latin pope. In this attachment with Latin
Christianity, Poland, Bohemia and Moravia differed from all the southern
Slavs. Subsequently Mieszko resisted Otto II's armies and established the
Polish border along the line of the Oder River and the Baltic Sea. His
daughter married the king of Sweden and then she later married the king of
the Danes and was the mother of Canute, of whom we shall hear much
more in the next chapter. The chief city of Poland was Gniezno.

Boleslav I, ruling from 992 after Meiszko's death, was one of the founders
of Polish greatness, conquering Moravia, part of Silesia and even Cracow.
He had an efficient military machine and laid the basis for an good
administrative system. He gained further access to the Baltic by conquering
eastern Pomerania. (Ref. 8) Around various feudal centers having local
princes, artisan villages developed, each dedicated to a single industry, such
as making barrels, or gold-smithing, or horse-breeding. Kruszuica was one
of these complexes which developed very rapidly. (Ref. 244)

RUSSIA

The Scandinavian merchants were still prominent in the river trade in
Russia. Maureen Green (Ref. 79) quotes the Arab historian Ibn Fadlan,
writing of the Vikings’ arrival on the Volga in 922: "Never had I seen people
of more perfect physiques. They are as tall as date palms, have reddish hair
and fair skins. Every man carries an axe, a sword and a dagger, and is never
seen without them". But he added: "They are the dirtiest of God's
creatures.”

The Slavonic tribes about Kiev (the Varangian principality) were loosely
united as "Rus" Thomas (Ref . 213) says that the first Grand Duchy of Kiev
resembled the East India or South African Companies, only under Viking
instead of English lords. Oleg and later Igor fought to the gates of
Constantinople and forced various treaties with Byzantium. Igor's son,
Svyatoslav, was the first Kievan prince to bear a Slavic rather than a
Scandinavian name. Igor's widow, Olga, ruled for their child-son and
introduced tax and administrative reforms which struck down the old tribal
systems, and in various communities, types of parliaments were established.
In addition to the upper classes (the families of princes, bodyguards,
courtiers, etc.) and the working class of freemen and the slaves, there now
appeared other classes such as traders and artisans and merchants. Illiteracy
dropped. Although Olga became a Christian, with ceremonies in
Constantinople in 957, Svyatoslav remained a pagan when he took the
throne. He led the Rus in plundering the Khazar capital on the Volga but
this was not difficult as the formerly war-like Khazars had largely become
merchants and farmers. As the Grand Prince Svyatoslav attempted to
destroy these peaceful people in 962 and 963 he only opened up the way for
the fierce Pechnegs, who then dominated the southern Russian steppe, and
who finally killed the Kievan prince. Additional Notes

After six years of fratricidal war Vladimir Svyatoslavich (980-1015) of
Great Novgorod, with the help of Viking warriors, became the ruler of Kiev
and the groom of a sister of the Byzantine Emperor Basil II, thus making
Russia a daughter of Byzantium. Through this marriage and trading links,
the Greek Christian faith made considerable inroads into the Russian state.
(Ref. 49, 79, 8, 222)

The original Georgian kingdoms had not reappeared after the Arab
withdrawal although in 978 Abasgia re-christened herself "Georgia" in a bid
for rekindling of old Georgian patriotism. (Ref. 137)

Note:Sawyer (Ref. 301) says that the Danish forces which invaded
Aethelred's England also included men from eastern Sweden. The rulers of
Wessex and Mercia defended their territories well

Note: Actually the Vikings were expelled from Dublin in 902, but they
regained it in 914. The new Dublin rulers coveted the greater wealth of
Northumbria and they tried to gain control of the Scandinavian Kingdom
of York, but without much success. After the middle of the century the
Viking leaders played only minor roles in Irish politics. (Ref. 301)

Note:King Harald converted to Christianity but this was probably at least
in part an attempt to deprive his German overlord of a pretext to invade
again. The history of Sven Forkbeard's reign is actually obscure. (Ref. 301)

Note:Most information about Russia of this period comes from Islamic
texts. Ibn Fadlan originally encountered the Rus in Bulgar in 922 and noted
the Scandinavian custom of cremating all the dead in boats. Those early
Rus were traders offering slave girls and furs, but by the end of the century
they also had amber, arrows, swords, falcons, wax, honey and walrus teeth.
Additional information about the early Rus rulers is given by Sawyer. (Ref.
301) It was in 907 that Oleg first attacked Constantinople and obtained
trading privileges. Igor, who took over in 913, was probably a direct
descendant of Rurik. Although Svyatoslav conquered Slavs, Balts and
Finns and attacked Bulgars and Khazars he could not beat the Byzantines
and was forced to supply them with mercenaries, which were called
"Varangians"

Forward to Europe: A.D. 1001 to 1100

Europe: A.D. 1001 to 1100

EUROPE
Back to Europe: A.D. 901 to 1000

The ages of feudalism and chivalry continued, but under most
classifications the "Dark Ages" ended toward the end of this century and the
true "Middle Ages" began. Three classes existed in the population of most
of Europe at this time:

1. the nobles, who fought
2. the clergy, who prayed
3. the peasants, who worked

(Ref. 49) The West slowly began to develop new sources of energy in the
form of wind- and water-mills which could produce from 2 to at most 10
horsepower. These undoubtedly played a part in Europe's first age of
growth along with the revival of towns and a new rural vigor, all of which
marked the beginning of the continent's rise to eminence. (Ref. 260) A
growing monetary economy was also evident. The medieval town was a
closed city, self sufficient, exclusive, jealously guarding its confines and its
citizenship. The defense against plunderers fell to the small group of
knights who rode expensive war horses and had been trained since
childhood in the use of arms and armor. The latter were produced by
specialized craftsmen about which little is known. But this knightly society
proved itself capable of far-reaching conquest and colonization, an example
of which we shall see in the Norman invasions.

The bloodshed accompanying the violent period of knighthood seemed well
accepted by all peoples north of the Alps. (Ref. 279)

SOUTHERN EUROPE

EASTERN MEDITERRANEAN ISLANDS

These islands remained essentially under the control of Byzantium although
there was some infiltration by Genoese and Turks.

GREECE

In the early part of the century Constantinople and Greece attempted to
regain prestige by resuming the Byzantin-Bulgarian Wars and they did
succeed in reconquering most of the Balkans. In the middle two-thirds of
the century, however, Greece was caught up in the turmoil associated with
the multiple changes of control of the Byzantine Empire as the military
commanders, the great landowners and the bureaucracy struggled. The year
1081 was a fateful one for the entire region. The Byzantine general Alexius
Comnenus revolted with a force of mercenaries, seized Constantinople and
plundered it, while at the same time Normans under Robert Guiscard were
landing in Epirus at the northwest corner of Greece. While the Normans
besieged Durazzo, Alexius bought the support of the Venetians with
extensive trade privileges, but even so, Guiscard defeated the emperor in
the battle of Pharasalus and went on to finally take Durazzo. Robert and his
son, Bohemund, then attacked various sites on the peninsula, including
Corfu, Castorias, Larrissa and Nicopolis. Their advance on land was finally
halted by guerrilla tactics of the natives, who hated the "Latins" and by
Seljug cavalry hired by the emperor. In 1085 the Normans were also
defeated at sea by the combined Byzantine and Venetian fleets. (Ref. 8,
119)

UPPER BALKANS

It was a bad century for the Balkans. First the region was conquered and
made a Byzantine province (1018) so that the First Bulgarian Empire came
to an end.

Many of the Bulgarian noble families settled in Constantinople and merged
with the Greek and Armenian aristocracies. Next, in about 1027, came the

Patzinaks, invading from north of the Black Sea. They were finally driven
back over the Danube by Byzantine general, Constantine Diogenes. Lastly,
near the end of the century there were several catastrophes. In 1083 all of
Macedonia up to the Vardar was conquered by the Normans and in 1086 a
religious heretic group, the Bogomils, obtained support of the Patzinaks and
Cumans and defeated Alexius and a large army. The Cumans then ravaged
the entire eastern Balkan region as far as Constantinople itself, when the
emperor then bought them off and used them in 1091 to annihilate the
Patzinaks in the battle of Leburnion. The final blow to the Balkans at the
end of the century was the sacking by the 1st Crusaders, as mentioned at the
beginning of this chapter. By this time Hungary had absorbed Croatia and
Dalmatia while the Patzinaks were squeezed into a small area of old
Bulgaria between Hungary and the Byzantine territory. On the western
coast, Byzantine Slav cities like Zara (Zadar), Trau (Trogir) and Regusa
(Dubrovnik) carried on a thriving commerce with the Moslem East. Soon
Venice was to conquer Dalmatia with a mixed Dalmatian- Venetian culture
resulting. (Ref. 119, 206, 137)

ITALY

Through most of the Middle Ages Italy was divided into three spheres of
power as follows:

1. The northern and part of central Italy, notably Tuscany, belonged to the
Holy Roman Empire of the German kings and was known as "Regnum
Italicum"

2. Rome and the rest of central Italy was subject to the popes

3. Southern Italy and Sicily were together as a separate kingdom called
"The Two Sicilies". (Ref. 68)

For awhile the Saracens were in control of Sicily, but they were expelled
and replaced near the end of the century by the sea-going Normans who
roved the area as pirates and robber-captains. Many came south in bands by
land through the Rhineland and Italy, proper, also. Robert Guiscard, one of
their leaders even crossed the Adriatic and captured the Byzantian
stronghold at Durazzo, as noted in a previous paragraph. Overall it took the

Normans about 20 years to completely take Byzantine Italy and Sicily, so
that it was in 1071 that the last Italian possession fell to these raiders. (Ref.
137, 8) In order to balance the power of the German emperor, the Cluny
pope, Hildebrand courted not only the counts of Tuscany and the Lombards
of north Italy but even the Norman conquerors in southern Italy.

There was an upsurge of commercial activity in the Mediterranean with the
principal carriers being the Italian merchants of Venice, Genoa and other
ports. (Ref. 279) Venice compensated for the decline in power of Rome and
Ravena by shrewdly accepting a form of Byzantine suzerainty under cover
of which it monopolized east-west trade for awhile. During the century,
however, Venice did lose some commerce to Milan and other port cities.
The main trade objects going from Europe to the East were amber, furs,
fish, tallow, honey, wool and wine. (Ref. 137, 211, 279) It so happens that
China had a marked increase in maritime business at this same time. Pisa
occupied Sardinia in 1050 and Corsica in 1077.

The medical school at Salerno, originally founded by Benedictine monks of
Monte Cassino, although it was remarkably free from Christian dogmatism,
reached its peak as a traveler from the Near East and India, known as
Constantine the African, arrived to transfer the great works of learning from
Arabic into Latin. This included the works of Galen. At Salerno, they
developed the "Regimen of Health" which was to be disseminated
throughout Europe by returning crusaders who visited there for treatment of
illnesses and wounds. This formed the basis of much of European medicine
until almost the end of the 16th century. The basic premise of this regime
was a balanced diet with a parity of the "four humours"- air, fire, water and
earth - or the body counterparts - blood, bile, phlegm and black bile. As an
example: the elderly and children always suffered from an excess of
water/phlegm, so anything cold and most fruit was forbidden[footnote].
These ideas came from Galen (see pages 328,413 and 435), who claimed
that his father had lived to be 100 years old because he never ate fruit (Ref.
211)

CENTRAL EUROPE

Before A.D. 1000 perhaps 4/5 of Europe north of the Alps and Pyrenees
was covered by dense forest so that communications and trade was greatly
impeded except along the rivers and over certain passes. By A.D. 1000 the
population may have reached 30,000,000 and in the next 150 years it
increased another 40%. After the cessation of the Viking raids, the
economic recovery of Europe was dramatic as new land was cleared, there
was an increase in local trade and local "fairs" made their appearance. The
use of iron plows may have made food more abundant, although
intermittently famines still occurred in France and England. (Ref. 8, 222)

GERMANY

In 1002 Henry of Bavaria, became Henry II, King of all Germany and in
1014 he was crowned Holy Roman Emperor. Conrad II followed in 1024 as
the first Salic Frank emperor and he added parts of the Kingdom of
Burgundy and present day Switzerland to the empire. Henry III (Salian or
Franconian), crowned in 1039, brought the empire to its zenith and
Germany was the most prosperous region of Europe. The church was the
educator Germany and in essence its administrator, also. Following Henry
III's death, however, internal troubles developed, including a civil war with
the opposition led by Rudolf of Swabia. Henry IV became the German king
at age 6 years and his mother Agnes was regent for 9 years. During this
time nobles and clerical magnates appropriated the royal resources and
sovereign rights freely, dealing the final blow to the monarchy. This was
also the time when Pope Gregory VII, Hildebrand, challenged the right of
kings to appoint bishops and demanded that the emperor give up this power
of appointment. The pope aligned the church with feudal estates and city-
states, which led eventually to the collapse of the empire. When Rudolf
died some of the civil strife ceased and the Franconian ruler again became
temporarily more powerful, although the struggle with the papacy
continued with the pope alternately excommunicating the emperor and the
emperor appointing an anti-pope - activities which carried well into the next
century. (Ref. 222) To return for a moment to Bavaria, in 1070 the now
Emperor Henry IV gave the Bavarian fief to Guelph (also Welf) d'Este IV,
who began the Guelph Dynasty.

In this century the German drive toward the east took two different lines.
There was expansion by colonization along the shores of the Baltic, up the
valleys of the Oder and Elbe rivers and down the plains by the Danube.
German speaking cities and monasteries were founded throughout these
areas with subsequent extension through Bohemia and Silesia. The second
method was political expansion. By 1100 the boundary of the empire had
been shifted from the Elbe to the Oder and this new territory eventually
became the Kingdom of Brandenburg. Frequent uprisings of Slavs
prevented significant growth in this century, however. (Ref. 184)

The towns of medieval Germany, as in all Europe, were relatively small and
closely surrounded by grain fields. Pigs roamed the streets which were so
dirty and muddy that they had to be crossed on stilts in the areas where no
wooden bridges were available. At the time of fairs the main streets of
Frankfurt were covered with straw or wood shavings. (Ref. 260) (Continue
on page 582)

NOTE: Insert Map 39: Europe in 1100

AUSTRIA

German-speaking people were now the major element in the population of
Austria. Although under the suzerainty of the German Empire, it was ruled
locally by the Babenburg family.

HUNGARY

As the century opened Hungary, under King Stephen, was a member in
good standing of the Christian nations. The descendants in the male line of
the old Magyar conquerors made up the body of freemen, having special
positions and paying taxes only to the church. Slavery continued and the
freed slaves and foreigners attained an intermediary position, paying dues to
the king for their land. Upon Stephen's death in 1038 there followed a long
series of disputes for the throne which lasted for the remainder of the
century. This dynastic warfare did much harm to Hungary, not only because

of the blood and devastation but because some of the contestants called in
foreign help, German and Polish, leading to political degradation and losses
of territory. Christianity was retained, although there were some rebellions
of the old Magyar pagans against the tithe, one occurring immediately after
Stephen's death and the last one in 1063. At the end of the century the
throne went to Ladislas I, a powerful protector of the church. Foreign
monks, including Germans, French and Italians, did help to raise the
cultural standards of the country. As will be noted on the preceding map, by
1100 Hungary controlled Slavonia and Croatia, most of what is modern
Romania, the southern part of current Czechoslovakia, the northern part of
present day Yugoslovia and Dalmatia. The Hungarians had ready access to
the Adriatic Sea. (Ref. 126)

CZECHOSLOVAKIA

Although Bohemia had most of the gold ore that was available in the West,
it could not really capitalize on this potential wealth because of extraneous
pressure from the Poles on the north and the Hungarians on the south.
Boleslav I, creator of the Polish state, took Prague in 1013, then in 1034
Bretislav I of the same country made himself Duke of Bohemia. Still
another Polish king, Boleslav I, conquered Slovakia. Nevertheless,
Bohemia did retain a kingship, with Spytihnev ruling from 1055 to 1061,
followed by Vratislav II. (Ref. 222) By 1100, however, as we have seen, the
Hungarians took over the entire southern part of present day
Czechoslovakia.

SWITZERLAND

A portion of present day Switzerland, along with part of the Kingdom of
Burgundy, was added to the Salic Frank Empire of Conrad IJ, early in the
century.

WESTERN EUROPE

Western Europe was the chief contributor to the 40% population increase in
Europe in this an the first half of the next century. The Cluniac reforms
raised the western monasteries beyond their previous level, so that they
became oases of peace, learning and stability. (Ref. 113)

SPAIN

Early in this century Jews of wealth and culture everywhere soared to
positions of influence in Spain. Samuel ibn Bagrela, skillful Hebrew poet,
superb Talmudist, master stylist in Arabic and astute military strategist and
political administrator, rose to be vizierate of Granada in the Moslem area
from 1030 to 1056. When the tables were turned and anti-Semitism
returned, however, he was massacred. (Ref. 8) Thee were four main
principalities in Spain, which can be described as follows:

Moslem Spain in the south As previously noted this had been an area of
great prosperity and culture, but in this century civil wars between Arabs
and Berbers became endemic, with the latter proclaiming independence in
the south and west. They were joined soon by some of the eastern seaboard
people so that only a shell of the Omayyad Caliphate remained in central
Spain and even it collapsed about 1031. The great Al Hakim library (see
page 487) was dispersed or destroyed. Several petty dynasties were founded
on the ruins of the Omayyad Caliphate but after Alfonso VI of Castile took
Seville, Ysuf-ibn-Tashfin, of anew Almoravid power in North Africa, was
called to help and he did — inflicting great losses on the Christians at
Zalacca in 1086. Ibn-Tashfin then returned to Africa because of pressing
problems there, but he was called back again in 1090 an that time he made
himself lord of Spain. As is apparent from the remarks above, part of the
Moslems' troubles was the presence of so may diverse, often antagonistic
factions, such as Yemenites, Syrians, Persians and Berbers. In spite of their
difficulties and eventual withdrawal, the Moslems greatly influenced
Spanish institutions, character and psychology, culture and language. (Ref.
137, 15, 196)

Castile in the northwest Upon the death of Sanche the Great (originally
from Navarre) Ferdinand I of Castile assumed the crown in 1035,

conquered Leon in A.D. 1037 and then reconquered a good deal of Portugal
from the Moors. Alfonso VI captured Seville and Toledo and installed in
son-in-law as the Count of Portugal in 1093.

THE IBERIAN PENINSULA
NOTE: Insert of the Iberian Peninsula 1037 and c.1100
Maps taken from Reference 97.

It was the aggressiveness of Alfonso VI that precipitated the Moslems' call
for help to the Almoravids in North Africa with their alleged 150,000 horse
and 3,000 foot soldiers. A Castilian, Rodrigo (Ruy) Diaz, called "Cid" by
the Moslems, initially was in the service of the Castilian kings, but after
trouble with Alfonso VI he was exiled twice and finally went over to serve
the Moslem king of Saragosa, which was an independent emirate in
northwestern Spain [footnote]. He eventually became the ruler of Valencia
and remained as such until his death in 1099. Although cruel, selfish and
proud, the legends about him resulted in his ultimate acceptance as a
national hero. Among other accomplishments, he founded the world's first
leprosarium. At that time in Spain a horse cost the equivalent of 50 oxen.
French influence began to penetrate into the country through the Cluniac
monks and Toledo eventually succeeded Cordoba as the center for
translation and exchange of Mediterranean scripts and ideas. (Ref. 119, 213,
15, 222)

This transfer of allegiance was within his rights as a free lord in a feudal
society (Ref. 213)

Barcelona in the northeastThis remained as an independent area.

Aragon and Navarre in the middle north The Basques of Navarre
expanded both at the expense of Christian Leon and the Omayyads, but late
in the century when the Arab emirate of Seville broke the Berber hold on
the south and pushed northward and the new Kingdom of Leon and Castile
again expanded on the western border, Navarre was more or less forced to
join Aragon for self defense (A.D. 1076) (Ref. 137)

PORTUGAL

Portugal began its separate existence as a fief under Count Henry of
Burgundy, when the area was given to him by Alfonso VI after it had been
retrieved from the Moors.

FRANCE

Paris, as a city of philosophers, had become the center of learning in
Europe.

The University of Paris was an outgrowth of the cathedral school of Notre
Dame. At the same time the Jews of the cities of France, as well as
Germany, established academies which developed the Ashkenazic Culture.
The missionary zeal of the Crusaders in 1096, however, was turned on the
Jews and they were killed or banished to ghettos.

In typical feudal style France became divided into seven main principalities,
each ruled by counts or dukes and Normandy was one of the greatest of
these. The Vikings had become French in speech and laws and as a race of
"hybrid vigor"[ footnote] these Normans administered the best province in
Europe. William the Conqueror, contemporarily called "the Bastard",
became chief of the Normans and in the last half of the century invaded
England, since by marriage he could be considered heir to the English
throne. (Ref. 49, 137) Another province, Burgundy, had as its last
independent king, Rudolph II, who made Henry of Bavaria his heir. (Ref.
222)

A term used by McEvedy (Ref. 137, page 60) referring to the Norman-
Frank mixture

With initial support of Normandy, the original Capetian line continued with
Henri I as official king of France from 1031 to 1060. He was an active ruler,
although illiterate, and he married the well-educated, cultured Anna
Yaroslavna, daughter of the Duke of Kiev[footnote], possibly with an eye to
helping the sliding Capetian fortunes. Upon Henri's death in 1060 Philip I
became the monarch over the entire feudal realm, but as was inherent in this
organization, his power was chiefly in name only. Philip was

excommunicated in 1095 by Pope Urban II for adultery. The idea of
knighthood spread in this century from France to the other European areas
of England, Germany and Spain. An uninterrupted food supply continued to
be a critical issue and France had 26 general famines in this single century.
(Ref. 222, 260)

Anna brought with her from Kiev the missal on which all subsequent kings
of France swore their coronation oaths but none of the Catholic priests
could read the Slavonic inscriptions there-on. It was not translated until
Peter the Great of Russia visited there in 1717

THE NETHERLANDS AND BELGIUM

Upon the break-up of Charlemagne's empire the Netherlands had originally
fallen to the Duchy of Lower Lorraine, but this again split into smaller
feudal states.

In this and the next two centuries one of the most powerful of these was
controlled by the "Count of Holland". (Ref. 175) Additional Notes

BRITISH ISLES *** (Page 1196)

Additional Notes

ENGLAND

In 1002, on the night of St. Brice, King Aethelred made a very foolish
move, in that he had all Danes who were outside of Danelaw murdered.
Among those killed was the sister of King Sweyn of Denmark. This sealed
England's fate and throughout 1003 and 1004 Sweyn remained in England,
ravaging and laying waste far and wide. Finally in 1007 Aethelred produced
a Danegeld of 36,000 pounds of silver and Sweyn went home, although his
agents got another 45,000 pounds later. In about 1013 the Danish king
returned to England and took over as monarch, while Aethelred fled to
Normandy| footnote]. In about 1014, Sweyn either fell off his horse and

died from injuries or was murdered. At any rate the English called
Aethelred back and the Danish heir, Canute, now 18 years of age, returned
to Denmark and prepared an expedition to return to England once again.
This second conquest of England was completed when Aethelred's son,
Edmund Ironside, died suddenly and Canute was accepted as King of
England. This acquisition was chiefly political, as Anglo-Saxon institutions,
speech and ways had, in six centuries become deeply rooted. Canute
became a Christian and died an Englishman, in 1035. Another son of
Aethelred, Edward the Confessor, then assumed the throne to continue the
old West Saxon line. A strong Norman party was active at Edward's court,
however, and he may actually have promised William of Normandy that he
would be his heir. Edward died in 1066 as the last of the Saxon kings and
there followed a hassle for political control with Harold, the strongest son
of Godwin, a Wessex earl of the Danish party, competing against his
brothers for control.

There is some confusion about these dates in the literature, in that Barry
Cunliffe (Ref. 43) says that after a massive Danish landing in 1009, the
force moved on to take London, burn Oxford and rampage through East
Anglia. Then Sweyn Forkbeard returned to Northumbria, where he was
proclaimed king

That year of 1066 was an eventful one. It was the year of Halley's comet
and it was also the year in which William, Duke of Normandy, landed at
Pevensey with a small, highly trained army on September 28th and marched
to Hastings, there to eventually fight Harold on a nearby hill on October
14th. Each army had about 5,000 men but the Normans had cavalry and
archers, while the Saxons had only foot soldiers[footnote], who were
already tired from very recent battles farther north against Harold's brothers,
backed by the Norwegian king. Harold was killed in the battle, along with a
large number of English land-owning aristocracy and in further battles that
followed almost immediately the Saxon land-holding class was virtually
wiped out. This land was subsequently parceled out to Norman barons as a
new, horse-powered nobility of about 180 families soon controlled Britain
under a truly feudal system. Enormous building projects were developed
with castles, palaces, monastic establishments, parish churches and private
houses. The Domesday Book of 1086 records 5,624 watermills serving

some 3,000 settlements south of the Severn and the Trent. (Ref. 260)
Additional Notes

A different view is given by Thomas (Ref. 213) who says that Harold's men
did have horses and used stirrups, but they did not recognize the value of
the latter and dismounted to fight, while William's horsemen charged on
their mounts

In this century England enjoyed a warmer climate than it had had
previously and there were now some 38 vineyards in the country. It was
also the first time since the era of the Romans that London gained
exceptional status as a city. The fact that England now had a monopoly on
tin must have helped the economy. The languages of culture were Latin and
French, with English regarded as inferior and all positions of power, both in
the church and in the state, went to people of French origin, yet the
population was 300:1 English, which is to say - Celt, Roman, German and
Viking. By the end of the century, among the majority of the people, Middle
English began to supersede Old English. England did not fully recover from
this Norman invasion until the 19th century, but it was never invaded again.
Celt, Gaul, Angle, Saxon, Jute, Dane and Norman all mixed blood with the
original native stock to produce the modern English people. (Ref. 117, 43,
224, 137, 213)

It was in 1086 that the famous Domesday Book was compiled on orders
from William I to list the assets of landowners for the purpose of taxation.
The book listed 25,000 slaves and 110,000 villains (serfs) among the
properties. William died after an accident in 1087 while invading a portion
of France and he was succeeded for the remainder of the century by his son,
William Rufus. (Ref. 222) (Continue on page 588)

SCOTLAND

The mainland of Scotland, apart from Galloway and the far north, was
gradually taken over by Scots. The violence surrounding the Scottish kings
subsided for awhile at the beginning of this century as Malcolm II ruled for
29 years. He protected his north by marrying a daughter of the Norse Earl
of Orkney and then attacked the English in the south. He was defeated and

his spearmen ended up with their heads decorating the palisades at Durham.
Near the end of his reign, allied with the king of Strathclyde, he burned
Northumbria and made his grandson, Duncan, the "King of all Cumbria".
But then Malcolm, like so many others, was murdered by his own nobles
and Duncan became king (after a few other claimants were killed). Duncan
only lasted 6 years before he too was eliminated by the aforementioned Earl
of Orkney and Macbeth (made famous by Shakespeare), who then reigned
for 17 years. It was a son of Malcolm who finally killed Macbeth, with the
help of Northumbrian troops, in the battle of Aberdeen. The victor became
Malcolm III, called "Malcolm Canmore the Great Head (1057) and
Scotland finally stepped from the Dark Ages.

Life in Scotland in these ages was a cycle of starvation and over-
indulgence, temporary peace and wasteful war, drought and flood. Religion
was a mixture of pagan myth and Celtic Christianity. People of the lowlands
lived in lake houses high on timber piles; in the mountains they had mud
huts, dry-stone walls and sod-roofed sheds, huddled about- early
monasteries where they retreated when danger threatened. The social
system was loosely tribal, a clan system in formation. By the time of
Malcolm Canmore, mainland Scotland probably spoke a coalition of Gaelic
and Pictish, with the former predominating and gradually replacing also the
original Scandinavian language in the north and on the islands. But the
Northumbrian rulers of Lothian, in the eastern lowlands, spoke English and
this would soon become the language of most of Scotland and its kings,
with Gaelic remaining only among the mountain people.

Malcom III Canmore's second wife, Margaret, was a descendant of King
Alfred and a grand niece of Edward the Confessor and with her to Scotland
came Edgar Atheling, heir to the English throne. The marriage, however,
did not prevent Edward from burning Northumbria and it didn't keep
William the Conqueror from continuing a terrible slaughter in that province
in his turn. Malcolm retaliated with a vicious raid of Cumbria, taking
thousands of English to serve as Scottish slaves. In spite of these invasions
and counter-invasions, Normanization of Scotland was soon under way,
initiated by the gentle guidance of Margaret and the Norman-English who
eventually filled her court. Upon Malcolm III's death in 1093, probably by
treachery, his brother Donald Bane and his sons, Duncan II and Edgar,

finished out the century on the throne. Donald Bane was the last Celtic king
of Scotland, because Duncan II and Edgar, only one-half Scot by parentage,
were truly Anglo-Saxon in thought and character. (Ref. 119, 170)

IRELAND

Brian Boru (or Boruma) of Munster was an early century leader who
promoted the development of roads and forts. In 1014 he defeated the
Vikings at Clontarf, although he was killed in the battle. Thereafter some
Norse remained in the cities but they no longer dominated the country and
soon most withdrew to various Scottish islands, letting Ireland revert to a
Celtic culture. Dublin did remain the chief market of the Scandinavians in
the west. After Clontarf there followed a short period of revival of art and
literature before another era of civil wars started. The next attempt at union
was by Diarmat, who became king of Leinster in the 1040s. (Ref. 8)

WALES

In 1039 the Welsh prince, Gruffydd of Gwynedd and Powys, defeatedan
encroaching English force and Wales was left alone for nearly 25 years. In
1063, however,

Harold, then heir to the English throne, with the help of his brother Tostig
of Northumbria, conquered Wales again by defeating Gruffydd ap
Llywelyn. (Ref. 222)

SCANDINAVIA

After conversion to Christianity the restless energy of the Vikings quickly
evaporated, although as marine merchants they did expand the Frisian-
North Sea traffic in fish, wine, beer, salt and metals and carried these
products on into the Atlantic. (Ref. 8, 139) Additional Notes

NORWAY

After the death of Olaf I Trygvesson in A.D. 1000 there was a period of
feudal disruption in Norway until Olaf II took control in 1016. This Olaf II,
also called Olaf the Big, like his predecessors, tried to convert his subjects
to Christianity by savage and bloody means and he was killed in 1028 while
fighting against his own rebellious subjects. At about this same time, young
King Canute, as monarch of both England and Denmark, also laid claim to
the Norwegian throne and was probably encouraged by those Norwegians
who were antagonistic to Olaf. The local, on the spot rulers of Norway in
the years immediately after Olaf II's death, however, were so inept that the
people began to think much more kindly of their dead king and, recalling
that at the moment of his death there was an eclipse of the sun, they began
to feel that Olaf's God was angry. With the help of English and German
missionaries they then became Christians and in the next century even
canonized Olaf. In 1035, under Magnus the Good, the Norwegians finally
eliminated all Danish claims to their throne, achieving complete
independence. Additional Notes

Harald I Hardrada (Harold Hardruler) came to the throne in 1046 after
having spent many years in the Mediterranean serving the East Roman
emperor as commander of a mixed Latin and Norwegian force fighting
Moslems along the north African coast. He decided to conquer England but
was defeated by the English King Harold in 1066 at the battle of Stamford
Bridge in September, just before the Norman invaders landed on the
English coast. After Hardrada there was another period of confusion with
wars of succession and struggles of the aristocracy against the growing
powers of the clergy. In spite of these troubles, increasing trade brought
prosperity. (Ref. 119, 8, 95, 117)

SWEDEN

In this and the next century Sweden's Christianity relapsed and the Uppsala
stronghold of the old Norse gods was again resplendent. Internecine wars
were common, particularly between the Goths and the Sveas and some of
these were probably precipitated by religious differences. Additional Notes

DENMARK

Upon the death of King Sweyn his son Harald was proclaimed king of
Denmark, while another son, Canute, at 18 years of age was supposedly
king of England. Even though he had to fight England's Edmund, when the
latter died Canute was accepted as king of all England, in reality. Shortly
thereafter Harald died in Denmark and Canute suddenly became king there,
also, so that he was monarch over a large empire. When he died in 1035,
however, this empire deteriorated rapidly. One of Canute's sons,
Hardicanute, became king of Denmark but he was not very competent and
did not live long anyway. It appears that he was poisoned by a Danish
chieftain living on a fine estate on the Thames, in England. At any rate, the
Danes then allowed Magnus the Good, the new young king of Norway, to
become the Danish monarch also. He made a great name for himself as he
personally led a Dano-Norwegian force against some tremendous hordes of
Wends who suddenly poured northwards into Jutland. But then Sweyn
Estridson (or Sweyn Ulf son), a nephew of Canute the Great and who had
been made the earl of Jutland by Magnus, turned against him and these two
young men fought year after year for the crown of Denmark. After Magnus
was drowned, Sweyn continued to battle the new king of Norway, Harald
Hardrada, who also had an eye on Denmark. In the end Sweyn was the
victor and then he sent several fleets across the North Sea to England to
help the Danish colonists who alleged that they were being suppressed by
William the Conqueror. In each instance, however, the commanders of the
Danish fleets allowed themselves to be bought off with the old method —
payment of Danegeld. The Viking Age came to an end in Denmark during
the time of Sweyn Estridson, but the Vikings had brought Christianity back
with them from western Europe. (Ref. 117)

Christianity did not have quite the same meaning in Denmark that it did in
other parts of Europe. It was felt to be quite natural for noblemen and kings
to have any number of mistresses. Sweyn had three or four wives in
succession but none of the five sons, who succeeded him in turn, was by
any of these lawful wives. But the religion did make some headway and in
1060 three bishoprics were set up in Denmark by the pope. (Ref. 117, 66)
One of Sweyn's successor sons was Canute the Holy, a strong-willed man
who defended the legal system, clarified taxation, introduced a tax for the
benefit of the church (10% of all harvested grain), worked to liberate all

slaves and sent to England for relics of St. Alban. His greatest resolve,
however, was to reconquer England and for this purpose he assembled a
great fleet in the Limfjord, consisting of 60 Norwegian, 600 Flemish and
1200 Danish vessels. But once again William the Conqueror foiled the
expedition by sending emissaries with large amounts of money for bribes,
and the fleet was disbanded before it could sail. The peasants turned against
Canute as he tried to tax them further and they finally murdered him inside
his church, allowing his brother Olaf to become king. Crops failed
throughout his nine year reign and he was given the name "Olaf Hunger".
The crops began to grow again only upon the ascension of his brother Eric
in 1095. (Ref. 117)

Recent excavations in Denmark have revealed three distinct types of
vessels:

( 1) A classic Viking Man-of -war, 90 feet long, carrying 40 to 50 oarsmen
and capable of long distance travel. This was undoubtedly the type of vessel
used to attack Britain.

(2) A smaller war-ship with only 24 oarsmen.
(3) Domestic deep-sea traders and light fishing boats.

All of these findings would confirm the two types of Viking themes;
peaceful and far flung trade and raiding. (Ref. 43)

FINLAND

The still pagan Finns worshiped Ukko, the air god; Tapio, the forest god;
and Ahti, the water god.

OVERSEAS SCANDINAVIAN CENTERS

After Iceland had become Christian in 1000 by vote of the Allthing, it was
given its own bishopric at Skalholt in 1054. (Ref. 66) Also see NORTH

AMERICA, this chapter. Additional Notes

EASTERN EUROPE

SOUTHERN BALTIC AREA

In this and the next century Danes and Swedes tried to Christianize Estonia,
without success. Pomerania, on the Baltic Coast, although under Poland
from about 980 to 1031, thereafter became dependent to Denmark. South of
this Boleslav I created the Polish state and then expanded farther south to
take Prague in 1033 and make himself Duke of Bohemia shortly thereafter.
Bretislav I followed in 1034 and Boleslav II was a great ruler from 1058 to
1079, conquering upper Slovakia and even putting a relative on the Russian
throne at Kiev. His own nobles eventually drove him from the Polish throne
after he had Bishop Stanilas murdered and had been excommunicated by
the pope. Nevertheless, at its peak Poland extended from the Baltic to the
Danube and from the Elbe to the Bug, with Russia as a vassal state. (Ref.
61, 49, 222)

RUSSIA

By 1028 there was a revitalization of an Alani people living first south of
the Patzinaks and then later south of the conquering Cumans in the
Caucasus. (Ref. 137) The Cumans, as noted previously, were part of the
Ghuzz[ footnote] Turks and they were variously also called Kipchaks and
Poloritse and later, when incorporated into the Mongol state of the 13th
century, they were known as Tatars or Tartars. The Patzinaks (Pechnegi,
Petchenegs) were a tough, nomadic people of the southern Ukraine, who if
thirsty simply dismounted, opened their horses' veins with a knife and drank
the blood. They often ate the fattest of the horses, slightly warming the meat
over a fire. Later in the century they were virtually annihilated by the
Emperor Alexius I. (Ref. 211)

"Ghuzz" is a shortened name for the more proper "Toguz-oghuz". (Ref.
137)

In spite of the fact that the extreme south of Russia was held by the semi-
barbarous tribes just mentioned, plus some Bulgars and Khazars, the
Kievan state reached its zenith at this time with the absorption of the
previous Scandinavian invaders and domination of both Slavic blood and
speech. Even so, the Kievan Prince Yaroslav married the daughter of the
king of Sweden and gave hospitality to the exiled king of Norway. The
social organization was aristocratic, the Russian church powerful. After
1054 Russia had to choose in the religious quarrel between Rome and
Constantinople and went with the Greek Orthodox Church. In that same
year, however, the last powerful ruler of Kiev died and power fell to the
Cuman Turks and the Orthodox world became divided in two. Almost all of
the Russian princes had been defeated by these migrating Turks, speaking
an east Turkic language, who had crossed into the Russian steppe at about
1060. Even though Kiev, itself, was controlled by Poland's Boleslav II after
1067, the Cumans sacked that city in 1093. (Ref. 8, 137)

Farther north, the principalities of Novgorod, Polotsk, Smolensk and Susdal
survived and just to the east of the latter, there still remained the Volga
Bulgars. There was still not a united country which might be called
"Russia". Much of the area was productive, however, and tallow, honey and
wax were exported. (Ref. 137)

Note:Merchants from Frisia and Flanders (and Germany) traveled as far as
Novgorod to get furs and paid for them partly in cloth and part in silver
from the Harz Mountains. (Ref. 301)

Note:The Kingdom of Man was established by Godred Crovan (a mixture
of Scandinavian and Gaelic names), a survivor of the defeat at Stamford
Bridge of 1,066. For two centuries his successors claimed authority over
the Hebrides, under overlordship of Norwegian kings. (Ref. 301)

Note:The 10th and 11th centuries saw remarkable increases in the numbers
and size of markets, with some of the largest and best located in the region
of the old Danelaw. (Ref. 301)

Note:There were many slaves in Denmark and Sweden, all obtained in
battles with other Scandinavians, Slavs, Balts, Finns and people of the
British Isles. (Ref. 301)

Note:The Olafs were converted and baptized in western Europe after
careers as Viking leaders and then returned to Norway with enhanced
reputations and greater wealth. They had found the advantages that
Christianity could confer on kings and thus they evangelized ferociously.
In spite of that, pagan customs survived in eastern Norway (and parts of
Sweden) until late in the century. (Ref. 301)

Note:It would appear that even in this century power was still distributed
among many rulers, including some women. All were only petty kings or
queens, but violent conflicts over territory probably occurred. Tentative
figures, based on graves, etc., in Malardalen indicate 4,000 farms and
40,000 people in that area, which was still not over-populated. There was a
gradual rising of new land from the ocean, as the sea-level had dropped 5
meters since the 9th century. Production of iron in Sweden reached a peak,
perhaps 4,000 kilograms annually. In some areas there were as many as 8
or 9 furnaces and 100 charcoal pits in each square kilometer. The iron was
needed for tools, weapons, household equipment and even ships (as rivets,
etc.). (Ref. 301)

Note:British Isle slaves accompanied the first settlers in Iceland and they
may have been buried with their owners. In the Iceland census of 1096 the

total was probably about 80,000 but the fully free population was only
about 4,500. After that, erosion and volcanic eruptions reduced available
resources and the population declined. Those who weren't fully free
included tenants, laborers, servants and landless poor. (Ref. 301)

Forward to Europe: A.D. 1101 to 1200

Europe: A.D. 1101 to 1200

EUROPE
Back to Europe: A.D. 1001 to 1100

After an adequate horse collar was developed at some place and some time
in this 12th century, plowing was done with horses, from the Ukraine to
Normandy although the Mediterraneans still used oxen and lighter plows.
Flax was grown all over Europe throughout the Middle Ages and was used
not only for linen clothing but also for linseed oil, sails and cordage. (Ref.
213) The craze for spices was in full swing and the west gave up its
precious metals in the difficult Middle East trade, which went on through to
the Far East.

NOTE: Insert Map 41. Crusader States c.1140

Fireplaces were now set in walls whereas previously the round hearth in the
center of the room had been used for cooking while braziers were used for
warmth. The new system was acceptable for cooking but deplorable for
heating for many centuries, awaiting technical improvements. Until the
beginning of this century European clothing had remained almost identical
with that of Roman times; long tunics falling straight to the floor for women
and to the knees for men. Now the men's clothes were lengthened but even
this change was minimal. The number of water wheels increased and their
use was extended from simply grinding grain to iron works and other
purposes. The transformation of windmills from the horizontal to the
vertical position greatly increased their power and usefulness.

We mentioned in the last chapter that there was an urban renaissance in
Europe. It became apparent in this 12th century that at least in many areas,
particularly Italy, Flanders and Germany, that the cities were actually
superior to the state, leading completely separate lives. (Ref. 260)

SOUTHERN EUROPE

EASTERN MEDITERRANEAN ISLANDS

Crete remained basically under Byzantine control, although at the end of
the century Genoese colonists had located at several points. During the 3rd
Crusade Richard the Lion Hearted conquered Cyprus from Byzantium but
the Eastern Empire retained control over Rhodes, the Cyclades and most of
the other Aegean islands except for a period in the middle of the century
when the Normans, under Roger II, temporarily took some areas. (Ref. 222)

GREECE

The Norman, Roger of Sicily, profited by the 2nd Crusade in being able to
seize many of the Greek Islands and attacked Athens, Thebes and Corinth.
He went down into the Peloponnesus in 1147 and up the Aegean coast in
1185. Constantinople remained a city of splendor, but there were many wars
and the Balkans broke free, so that there was eventually little left of the
Byzantine Empire except Greece, itself.

UPPER BALKANS

Hungary absorbed Dalmatia and after 1106 Croatia existed also under the
Hungarian King Kalman. Secondary to the turmoil of the 1st Crusade the
Byzantines did destroy the Patzinaks, who had finally been crowded into a
small area just southwest of Hungary, but the territory was immediately
taken over by the Cuman Turks. (Ref. 137) In 1124 Hungary's Stephen II
was defeated by the temporarily resurgent Byzantine Emperor John II
Comnenus, who prevented the Hungarians from keeping control of
Dalmatia, Croatia and Serbia at that time. (Ref. 222) The Orthodox Church
considered Islam as simply a Christian heresy and felt that there was little to
choose between this and the Latin schismatic and often felt that the
"Franks" were even more detestable enemies than the Moslems, for they
insisted upon substituting their own creed and rites for Orthodoxy, whereas
Moslem rulers allowed the Orthodox Church to manage its own affairs,
subject only to payment of taxes and recognition of Moslem political
supremacy. This fact did much to assure Turkish success in the Upper

Balkans and helped to stabilize later Mongol power over the Russian
principalities. (Ref. 139) This feeling was often reciprocated by the Western
Church. Petrarch, for example, wrote: "The Turks are enemies, but the
Greeks are schismatics and worse than enemies"[ footnote].

From A History of the Byzantine Empire, by A.D. Vasiliev, as quoted by
McNeill (Ref. 139, page 514n)

Near the end of the century Bulgaria again broke free from Byzantine rule
and then Serbia was able to separate from Bulgaria to found the poverty
ridden Serb Kingdom (1180).

ITALY

The north half of Italy remained subject to the German Empire, but the
Papal States had some semblance of self-government and Lombardy and
Florence retained some local control. Venice continued to be independent
while southern Italy and Sicily prospered under the excellent administration
of the Normans. The people of the Two Sicilies had a free choice of religion
under Roger I Guiscard and then Roger II after 1101. The latter even started
a silk industry at Palmermo, bringing silk workers from Greece, after his
expeditions there. Frederick Barbarossa entered Rome on his 4th expedition
into Italy, in 1167, and enthroned an anti-pope Paschal III, but a pestilence
broke out among his troops and he soon withdrew. The end of the
predominance of knighthood was foreshadowed when an army of German
knights met defeat to charging pikemen of the Lombard League of cities of
northern Italy at Legnano in 1176. The League's subsequent military might
was completely defensive with town walls and the massed pikemen
infantry. (Ref. 279) At the end of the century the German Emperor Henry
VI, with the help of Genoa and Pisa, which was then at the height of its
power, wrested southern Italy away from Norman control. Genoa may have
minted its own gold coins late in this century and other Italian cities soon
followed. (Ref. 222, 260) Additional Notes

In the Italian Alps through Lombardy and Piedmont (as well as in Carinthia
and Styria of Austria) the Carthusian monks were dominant in the
development of pre-modern iron smelting through the use of strong drafts

produced by the enormous water power of alpine streams. Then came a
method of refining cast iron, by charcoal fire and the addition of scrap iron
to produce steel (Ref. 260). In spite of political changes, the medical school
at Salerno continued to function on a high level. Even epilepsy and
psychoses were given somatic causes and treatment, although their organic
bases were still denied by the followers of Galen. Salerno was a cross-roads
of European, Arabic and Jewish medicine. Gerard, an Italian scholar of
Cremona, went to Toledo, Spain to learn Arabic and by the time of his death
in 1187 he had translated 71 Arabic works, most of them medical, including
Avicenna's Canon and the works of Rhazes.

CENTRAL EUROPE

In general Europe experienced another warm period during this century, as
in the last one. (Ref. 224)

GERMANY

North German cities soon dominated the Baltic trade and new cities were
formed father and farther eastward by the pseudo-crusades of the Knights of
the Sword and the Teutonic Knights. (Ref . 137). Cultural advances speeded
up civilization in the German realms. The first paper mill in Europe opened
at Ravensburg. These areas also saw the mining of copper, silver, gold and
iron. There were continued emperor - pope struggles with a temporary
peace following the Concordant of Worms of 1122 when it was agreed that
there would be a divided ceremony of investiture - one spiritual and one lay,
thus assuring the concurrence of both pope and emperor in the choice of
bishops.

The Salic-Frankish Dynasty ended with the death of Henry V in 1125 and
there followed dynastic battles between two great families for control of the
empire. These were the Welfs or Geulfs (primarily in Saxony) and the
Waiblingens or Ghibellines (from Swabia and southern Germany). (Ref. 68)
The latter was the family name of the Hohenstaufen Dynasty[footnote]
which will appear frequently in later German history. Under Frederick I

(called Lord of Peace or Barbarossa, for his red beard) as Holy Roman
Emperor, Germany rose to the leadership of Europe. Frederick at first
forbade wars, but then reestablished imperial supremacy of Poland,
Bohemia, Hungary and Burgundy, only to meet failure in Italy as the old
Lombard cities united with the pope, against him. He led a strong
contingent to join Richard of England in the last part of the 3rd Crusade and
died on the trip on the peninsula of Asia Minor.

Trager (Ref. 222) gives the explanation that "Ghibelline" is an Italian
corruption of "Waiblingen" which was the name of the estates on which the
Swabian castle "Staufen" was located. This later became Hohenstaufen.
"Guelph" is a corruption of the Bavarian family name "Welf"

In spite of the empire, most of the old Stem Duchies of Germany continued
their own separate ways, pretty much independent of the empire. In
Brandenburg the aggressive leaders of the Ascanian Dynasty, such as Albert
the Bear, increased the size and power of their state. Settlers were imported
and towns were founded. In Bavaria, from the 9th to the 12th century, all
the dukes were at the center of the rebellions of the great German princes
against the imperial authority. Early in the period Emperor Conrad IT had
deposed Guelph Henry the Proud and gave Bavaria to the Babenbergs of
Austria, but Frederick I restored its autonomy. He soon put Otto of
Wittelsbach in charge, however, and that family then ruled Bavaria until the
20th century.

Frederick's son, the future Henry VI, had married the daughter of Roger II
of Sicily and after he was crowned emperor in 1190, he proceeded to take
over Sicily after a struggle with the Norman anti-king, Tancred of Lecce.
The Waiblingen or Hohenstauf en supremacy then extended over all Italy
except for the Papal states. Capturing King Richard on his return from the
Crusade, Henry used the captivity to make the crown of England a fief of
the empire and to extort an enormous ransom.

AUSTRIA

Although Vienna had been partially fortified since Roman times the
ramparts were further improved by 1137 and ten years later work was

started on the St. Stephens cathedral. In 1156 Austria was given the special
status of an hereditary duchy within the Holy Roman Empire, by Frederick
I, Barbarossa. This was an era of great prosperity under the leadership of
the Babenberg family.

HUNGARY

After Coloman I conquered Damatia from the Venetians in 1102, Hungary
had nearly a century of peace, if we do not count a few dynastic fights and
lesser border skirmishes. By the end of the century Hungary had doubled
her area and increased the population to 2,000,000 people. There was
farming and some good sized towns and gold, silver and salt mines.
Promotions to the rank of freemen or nobles became less and less and did
not keep pace with the growth of the unfree population and so government
dwindled to an oligarchy. Further transition to private ownership of land
resulted in changes with diminution of clan and crown lands. In 1150
Germans from the Moselle region (Saxons) were called in to help defend
Transylvania against Poland and the Greeks and they settled in the Zips and
southern Transylvania. At the end of the century Bela III married the
daughter of the King of France and Hungary became the most powerful
kingdom in southwestern Europe. Educated at Constantinople, Bela
introduced Byzantine customs to the Hungarian court. (Ref. 126, 222)

CZECHOSLOVAKIA

Following the death of Bretislav II the dukedom of Bohemia was obtained
for Ladislav I with the help of the German emperor. There were multiple
local "kings" all over this area but all were more or less subservient to the
German emperor, except in the northern portion which was controlled by
the Polish kings. Duke Ottokar I was restored to power in 1197 and
strengthened Bohemia, so that it became a real factor in German affairs.
(Ref. 222)

SWITZERLAND

This country did not exist independently at this time.

WESTERN EUROPE

"Western Europe had begun its slow climb out of political dislocation and
feudal anarchy during the 12th century"[footnote]. Although weakened,
kings had survived and now, under feudalism they exerted their rights as
"liege lords". There was a prolonged population rise beginning about 1100
and lasting for 2 1/2 centuries. (Ref. 260)

Quotation from Reference 8 page 124

SPAIN

The militancy of the Catholic Church in this period of the Crusades was
especially noticeable in the Christian part of Spain. Alfonso I of Aragon
even named the Templars and Hospitallers heirs to his kingdom. It is
ironical then, that this particular period ushered in 200 years of anarchy and
civil war between rival Christian kingdoms of the northern sectors. Aragon
and Navarre separated in 1134 and the former advanced progressively while
the latter shrunk and lost still more territory to Castile at the end of the
century. Leon seceded from Castile in 1139; Aragon and Barcelona united
in 1140.

NOTE: Insert SPAIN IN 1180

Moslem Spain in the south was taken over by the Berber Almohades
(Muwahids) as the older Almoravid Dynasty (Murabit) collapsed in 1145.
Muslim Spain made silk, particularly in the great industrial city of Almeria,
which at one time had five thousand looms. The Alpujarras Mountains were
covered with mulberry trees, essential for the silk worm. The mining of
mercury and silver continued to be important Spanish industries and there
was a paper factory in Moorish Spain at least by the middle of the century,

with the Arabs using rags, wood and straw as the source materials. (Ref.
137, 213)

The greatest man in Spain in this century was a Moslem heretic - the great
physician and philosopher, Averroes. He was the first to explain the
function of the retina and did some work on immunity. Philosophically, he
pleaded for a better understanding between religion and philosophy, stating
that symbolically interpreted, the doctrines of religion could be harmonized
with the findings of science and philosophy. His importance for the history
of ideas lay in his stimulating effect upon Latin Christian theologians. From
the late Roman period Aristotle had been curiously disguised by a Neo-
Platonic garb but Averroes work abstracted Aristotle from this alien dress
and permitted the theologians of Paris to start their revolutions of Christian
philosophy from a more or less authentic Aristotelian basis. Another great
Arabist physician of this century was Avenzoar (Abu-Marwan ibn-Zohr),
born in Seville, the son of a Jewish physician. He condemned astrology and
mysticism in medicine and disagreed with some of Galen's teachings. His
reports on tracheotomy suggest that he may have done some surgery. The
most famous Jewish physician of all in Arabic medicine, however, was
Maimonides (Moses ben Maimon), born in Cordoba and a student of
Averroes. When the Almohade Dynasty began to harass non-believers, he
fled to Morocco and finally to Cairo where he became physician to Sultan
Saladin. Translations of his writings into Hebrew and Latin were widely
read throughout Christian Europe. Other Jewish physicians who fled Spain
at the same time ended up in Salerno and Montpellier where they brought
Arabic science and medicine to Christian Europe. (Ref. 49, 139, 125)

Merino sheep had been introduced into Spain from Africa but they were
highly sensitive to temperature and while they could graze in the northern
highlands in Castile in the summer, they had to be driven far south to
Andulusia for winter feeding. When conflicts between the northern
Spaniards and the southern Moors became serious, these movements
became difficult and ended as one of the provocations firing Spanish
determination to drive the "infidels" from the peninsula. (Ref. 122) Slavery
thrived on the Iberian peninsula and in the entire Mediterranean world, as
Moors, African, Hungarians, Serbians and others were enslaved from one

end of the Mediterranean to the other. Christians even enslaved fellow
Christians. (Ref. 267)

PORTUGAL

After winning wars against the Moors and Spain, with the help of papal
intrigue, the Portuguese became independent from Castile in 1139 and by
1143 had established their separate kingdom under Afonso I of the
Burgundian Dynasty. This did not stop the continuing wars with both the
Moors and the Castilians, however. (Ref. 8)

FRANCE

With accelerated cathedral building in the 11th and 12th centuries, western
Romanesque architecture developed into Gothic. Steep roof s elongated into
spires, the cross-grained vaulted roof was introduced, the pointed

arch[ footnote] displaced the rounded one and there was development and
elaboration of windows and stained glass. Craft guilds began to appear all
over Europe so that a new class of people now had to be tallied in addition
to the nobles, clergy and peasants. France led the way with the development
of the fourth class, the bourgeois, or burgesses, who were bakers,
merchants, master-craftsmen and the like. But still the whole of the land
was owned by a small number of families and landed property was really
the sole source of power. The Crusades and later the English wars
decimated the nobles of France and divided their possessions. Actually
under a series of weak kings, including Louis VI the Fat and Louis VII the
Pious, France remained throughout this century a minor and harassed state.
England held an area on the continent that was greater than that held by the
French king by virtue of the fact that the English throne had passed to the
Count of Anjou (the English Henry IT), who had married the heiress of
Aquitane. Burgundy was chiefly German, Provence was independent and so
was Flanders, the area now a part of the Netherlands. Only at the end of the
century, in about 1180, did France get a king, Philip II, who was strong
enough to begin lifting France to a significant place in Europe and become
strong enough to battle Richard I, of England. The marriage of Eleanor of

Aquitaine to England's Henry II not only eventually led to the Hundred
Years War, but gave overnight prosperity to the Bordeaux wine merchants
who became purveyors to the English court. Eventually a 300 ship fleet was
built to carry Bordeaux wine to England. (Ref. 33, 217, 137)

The pointed arch had been used in Arabic art for 200 years. (Ref. 33)

NOTE: Insert FRANCE IN 1180

Of 15 universities established in France in the Middle Ages, only two
allowed the study of medicine - Montpellier and later the University of
Paris. After 1180, Jews and Arabs could be admitted to Montpellier. (Ref.
125)

THE NETHERLANDS AND BELGIUM

We have previously noted that in this century commercial development in
Italy took a quantum jump. A secondary commercial center appeared in the
Low Countries where the navigable Rhine, Meuse and Scheldt rivers
converge. Overland portage routes linked these channels to Italy and
exchanges between the two centers occurred regularly at great fairs in
Champagne. (Ref. 279) The independent area of Flanders had the great,
busy port of Bruges, which was the center of the Hanseatic League, an
alliance of merchants from ports all across the North and Baltic seas. It was
designed to promote member cooperation against external competition and
pirates, to arrange for congenial association of merchants away from home
and to protect against fluctuating currencies, defaulting debtors and feudal
tools. The League had a detailed Code of Maritime regulations and initially,
at least, was an agent of civilization. Merchants of Flanders brought English
wool to Flemish weavers and then sold the cloth throughout the north, soon
dominating all this north trade. It is unfortunate that eventually the league
became an oppressor as well as a defender of rights. (Ref. 49, 137)

BRITISH ISLES

ENGLAND

The Thames at London was already bordered by a continuous line of docks
for the business of exporting wool, cloth and tin and importing such things
as Arabian spices, Chinese silks, Russian furs, and French wines. Iron was
mined and this necessitated a revival of coal mining to process the metal.
While prior to the Norman conquest all English wool had been taken to
Flanders for weaving, now Flemish artisans went to England and taught the
English how to use wool, so that it eventually became a foundation of
British wealth. Up until the middle of the 12th century Anglo-Saxon (Old
English) was the language of England; then Middle English developed.
(Ref. 213)

The early kings of this century - Henry I (the last Norman), Stephen and the
six month queen, Matilda, were of little consequence to history. Near the
middle of the era a six year civil war broke out and as a result Henry II of
the Plantagenet line became king (1154). The name Plantagenet comes from
"Planta Genesta", the broom, which was the emblem of the house of Henry
Fitz-Empress of Angevin. Henry II, as noted above in the discussion of
France in this century, married the heiress of Aquitane and thus acquired the
Norman Angevin and Aquitanian fiefs on the continent. He became one of
England's greatest kings, known for establishing the jurisdiction of the
secular courts over the clerical and thus liberating English law from feudal
and ecclesiastical limitations. He quarreled with his former friend, Thomas
Becket, the archbishop of Canterbury, as the latter began to champion
church against crown. Killed by the king's knights, Becket became a martyr
and the king lost the people's confidence. Nevertheless, his reign marked
the beginning of the English Common Law and the beginnings of trial by
jury. Jurymen were witnesses as well as judges of the fact, picked because
they were the most likely to know the facts. (Ref. 49, 137)

Near the end of the century, Richard I, son of Henry II and more French
than English, became king, fought with Philip of France, lived the life of an
adventurer and participated in the 3rd Crusade. Returning from this jaunt to
the Near East he was taken prisoner by the Holy Roman Emperor and was
finally ransomed at a high price. When Richard, called the Lion-Hearted,
died in 1199 he was succeeded by his brother John.

SCOTLAND

There was continued racial and political turmoil in Scotland. After Edgar
and Alexander I, David I, another son of Malcolm and Margaret, reigned
from 1124 to 1153 and continued the gradual Normanization as an Anglo-
Norman aristocracy arose including the Baliols (de Bailleul), Bruces (de
Brus), Lindsays and Fitz Alans. These Normans — built timber palisaded
towers with fortresses throughout the southern regions and the local people
were greatly impressed by the apparent strength of the new rulers. Put to a
test by a Celtic revolt from the men of Moray, the Norman horsemen were
easy victors and subsequently raided and burned the Moray glens. Battles
with English troops also occurred with the loyalties of the new Norman-
Scottish aristocracy divided so that the outcomes were only confusing.
David founded the city of Edinburgh, giving his friends strips of land on
either side of the castle rock. Upon his death there was incessant fighting
for years over the succession and stability was not regained until 1165 when
David's second son, William I, called "The Lion"[footnote] became king. In
1174 William was captured by the English and for his release, he accepted
feudal allegiance to the English crown. (Ref. 170)

So-called because of the roaring beast displayed on his standard

IRELAND

Irish-English conflict began in this century when an Irish chieftain, Tiernan
O' Rourke, lost his kingdom and wife to a rival and sought aid from Henry
II of England. The king sent some Normans from Wales, including Richard
Fitz Gilbert de Clare, Fitzgerald, Fitz Henry and Carew, among others, and
then even went himself in 1171, calling himself "Lord of Ireland". Norman
castles arose at Maynooth, Trim, Carrickfirgus and Dublin, but in the end
the Irish absorbed the Normans into Irish culture. As a result, however, the

Irish never again quite trusted the English. Belfast was founded in northern
Ireland in 1177 as a castle to command a ford across the Lagan River. (Ref.
170,222) Additional Notes

WALES

The prince of north Wales, Gruffydd ap Cynan, and his sons worked in the
first half of the century to rebuild native Welsh power behind the
Snowdonian range. Elsewhere Wales had become the home of many of the
Norman nobility and they were the Welch-Norman buccaneers sent by the
English king to Ireland when an internal dispute there offered an excuse for
intervention. Tintern Abbey was founded in the Wye Valley by Cistercian
monks in 1131. (Ref. 222)

SCANDINAVIA

Civilization progressed rapidly among these sturdy people. Work was held
in honor and great craftsmen developed, particularly in woodworking and
shipbuilding. There was wide distribution of the land among a free
peasantry. Polygamy was practiced among the wealthy in spite of
acknowledgment of Christianity. The great Scandinavian epic poems called
the "Edda", with sources from Norway, Iceland and Greenland, appeared at
some time between the 8th and this 12 century. Additional Notes

NORWAY

King Sigurd Magnusson, like King Harald before him, took up the fight
against Moslem expansion by taking 60 Viking ships to fight in Portugal
and Spain and then on to Morocco and the Balearic Islands. He was well
received by his Norwegian predecessors (Normans) on Sicily, where Roger
II Guiscard was duke. King Sigurd, with the consent of the pope, raised
Roger to the rank of king and then proceeded on in 1110 to conquer the
fortress Sidon, in Lebanon. The first cardinal to visit Norway was Nicholas,
who later became Pope Adrian IV and his visit probably helped to make the
Catholic Church the greatest power in Norway at the time. Most of the rest
of the century was a period of confusion, marked by wars of succession and
by a struggle against the growing power of the clergy. Nevertheless, there
was expansion of trade and increasing prosperity. Sverre became king in
1184 and maintained a strong monarchy against both aristocratic and

clerical opposition, thanks to support from small landowners. (Ref. 119, 95)
Additional Notes

SWEDEN

King Sverker amalgamated the Sveas and the Goths and was then
succeeded by Eric IX Jedvardsson in 1150. Erik restored Christianity and
then conquered the heathen Finns, establishing seven-century domination
over those people. (Ref. 222, 119)

DENMARK

Cavalry was first used in Denmark in 1134 and this accentuated a feudal
tendency as a new Class of professional, military nobles appeared. In this
period many Danes returned from England where William had started to
persecute them and subsequently much Danish building had an English
influence. Valdemar (or Waldemar) I, the Great, be came

Danish king in 1157 and gave the country a strong government, as trade
increased. Copenhagen was founded as a market outlet by the chief
minister, Bishop Absalon. Together the king and this minister wiped out the
savage Wends, pirates from the Island of Rugen. Valdemar married two of
his daughters to two of Frederick Barbarossa's sons. Absalon although not
very scholarly himself, got his clerk, Saxe, to write Denmark's chronicles in
Latin. Sweden never had such a chronicle and thus Swedish history is not
well documented. (Ref. 117, 222)

FINLAND

It was raiding by the Finns on the Swedish coast which finally provoked the
Swedish King Eric [X to retaliate by conquering Finland. He then withdrew
most of his troops and left a Bishop Henry to convert the Finns. They
promptly killed the missionary, although much later they made redemption

by making him a saint. In the meantime, however, they reverted to
paganism for another 50 years.

OVERSEAS SCANDINAVIAN CENTERS

Iceland's Mount Hekla volcano erupted in 1104 and again in 1154,
devastating farmland for 45 miles around its base. The Scandinavian
colonies on Greenland continued throughout this century. (Ref. 222)
Additional Notes

EASTERN EUROPE

SOUTHERN BALTIC AREA

When the Cuman invasion ended Russian trade with Constantinople, the
exports of tallow, honey, wax and furs were sent via the Baltic to the West
and the Baltic ports, already rich with fisheries, became even more
important. In these states just south of the Baltic, Christianity came in by
means of the German sword, through the Teutonic Knights, although the
conversion was not actually official until after 1190. In the meantime,
Poland subdued the Pomeranians (1102-1124) and King Boleslav III gained
access to the Baltic Sea. He divided his realm into five principalities for his
sons, with Cracow as the capital. The great landlords and knights had
become well-defined social classes and along with the clergy became ever
more powerful. After an eight year reign by Vladislav II (Ladislas),
Boleslav IV took over in 1146. He was not a strong ruler and he lost
territory to Albert the Bear and Henry the Lion. As far as the Germans were
concerned, Poland was only a dukedom and Frederick Barbarossa again
invaded Poland in 1157, forcing the submission of "Duke" Boleslav. There
followed Mieszko III, who was so despotic that his own nobles drove him
out in 1177 and then Casimir IT, the Just. (Ref. 137, 222, 119)

RUSSIA

This was the century of the decline and fall of the Kievan realm and
according to the historical schema of Toynbee (Ref. 220) it represented the
"Time of Troubles" in the Eastern Orthodox Christian Society, Russian
Division. Between 1054 and 1224 there were 83 civil wars, 46 invasions of
Russia, 16 wars waged by Russian states on others, and 293 princes
disputing 64 thrones. (Ref . 49). Kiev, itself, succumbed internally to class
warfare and a declining wealth, precipitated by the diversion of trade routes
through Mediterranean channels and finally to external force as the
Mongols invaded in the next century. The Cumans remained powerful in
the south and continually raided until the local people fled north to the
forest, emptying the steppe, but increasing the population of the central and
northern principalities, including Moscow, which was founded in A.D.
1147, and Novgorod, which built up a far-flung empire far into the arctic.
(Ref. 8). Vladimir Monomakh, Prince of Kiev, carried on numerous
campaigns against the Cumans and his reign marked the last period of
brilliance at Kiev. The Volga Bulgars still held the middle Volga region and
prevented Russian expansion eastward. South of the Cumans in the
Caucasus there was a large group of Alans and the Kingdom of Georgia.
(Ref. 137)

Note:The great banking houses of Florence started the European economy
revival and Genoa followed. (Ref. 292)

Note:The Irish text, the title of which translates as War of the Irish with the
Foreigners, like many of the medieval sagas, is a piece of dynastic
propaganda, written in this century. It starts with an account of Viking
attacks of the 9th and 10th centuries and then goes into an heroic saga
about 2 Munster kings, Mathgamain and his brother Brian Boru (further
described on page 557), from whom the O'Brien kings traced their descent.
(Ref. 301)

Note:Throughout Scandinavia scattered royal estates having several
houses served as bases for royal officials. (Ref. 301)

Note:The death of King Magnus on his second expedition to Ulster in
1102, marks the end of the Viking Age. In western Norway two classes of
freemen were recognized: the "hauldar", owning inherited land and other
men of free descent, farming land not theirs by inheritance. The law of
Trondelag recognized these two classes but also a third, lower class of
landless freemen. "Mansbot" was an atonement price, the legal value of a
man's life and varying according to his class. After a killing, a feud could
be averted by paying the "mansbot" to the family, which could be extended
to 4th or 5th cousins' Much that has been written about this may be pure
fantasy, constructed by later medieval lawyers. Norway had a single king
in this century, but his influence did not extend far inland. (Ref. 301)

Note:Several Icelandic farms were smothered by tephra from the eruption
of Mount Hekla, and many of these have been excavated. Power in Iceland
was divided among many chieftains. The early church was not a royal
institution, but early bishops were, in fact, chieftains. All chiefs fought for
more land and power, but in the meeting of the Allthing once a year the
unity of the country was symbolically expressed. This was the century
when Icelanders began to compose sagas, first about Norwegian kings and
Icelandic bishops, later about the families who were believed to have
played prominent parts in the history of the country. Some 300 farms had
been established in Greenland by this century. (Ref. 301)

Forward to Europe: A.D. 1201 to 1300
Choose Different Region

1. Intro to Era
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4. Central and Northern Asia
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6. The Indian Subcontinent
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8. Pacific

Europe: A.D. 1201 to 1300

EUROPE
Back to Europe: A.D. 1101 to 1200

Although Europe was in great part burning with the Crusade zeal, still the
trade and economy was such that one might say that western capitalism was
established in this century. The scale of crossbow manufacture, particularly
in Barcelona and Genoa, had reached the stage where the supply allowed
not only use in the crows nests of fighting ships but also in land battles as
well. This further signalled the downfall of horse warfare as suggested by
the success of the Catalan Company whose exploits will be told under
TURKEY and SOUTHERN EUROPE, in the next chapter. (Ref. 279)
Additional Notes

SOUTHERN EUROPE

EASTERN MEDITERRANEAN ISLANDS

In 1204 at the close of the 4th Crusade, the Latin Empire of Constantinople
controlled the Cyclades under the title of Duchy of the Archipelago, with
ruling Italian and Venetian nobles. At the same time, Rhodes was freed
from Byzantine control and some areas came under rule of local lords,
while others were under Genoa or Nicaea.

By 1282, however, the Seljug Turks took over the entire island of Rhodes
while Venice continued to dominate Crete after the 4th Crusade. When the
Hospitallers arrived on Cyprus in 1291, they established sugar cane, which
they had brought from Syria. (Ref. 38, 86)

After Constantinople was sacked by the 4th Crusaders, the Byzantine areas,
including Greece, were divided into feudal dominions, each ruled by a Latin
noble. Most of these on the mainland were French and French became the

official language there for a period of 57 years, particularly in the feudal
state ruled by the Villeharddouin princes. An unique mixture of French and
Hellenistic culture flourished in Morea in the Peloponnese. In 1261 the
Byzantine Empire was restored under the Palaeologus Dynasty, but the
territory was much reduced and there was little attached glory. Greek art
and literature did experience some revival and there were at least two
peripheral Greek dynasties - the Greek Empire in Exile at Nicaea in Asia
Minor and the Despotate of Epirus on the west shore of the Greek
peninsula. The latter had fallen to the Bulgars in a war in 1230 but the
Greek-Nicaean empire armies triumphantly re-entered the area in July of
1261.

UPPER BALKANS

The Second Bulgarian Empire emerged after the Crusader sacking of
Constantinople, with the Asen Dynasty oscillating in allegiance between the
West and the East. Under her greatest king, John Asen II, Bulgaria ruled
also Thrace, Macedonia, and for awhile after 1230, also Greek Epirus and
Albania. This king was much beloved, even by the Greek population.
Finally he broke with Rome and the Bulgarian Church became independent.
While Bulgarian territory was at its maximum a Mongol invasion greatly
disordered and weakened the state and the leadership of the Balkans moved
farther west to the Serbs. Ever since that time, even up until the 20th
century, Bulgaria has been striving to regain that once extensive empire
which included parts of Yugoslavia, Turkey (old Thrace), Greece (old
Macedonia) and Albania. As the Mongols, under Kadan, headed back
toward Mongolia in 1241, the Bulgarian King Koloman I paid tribute and
accepted Batu as his overlord. (Ref. 72, 27)

The Kingdom of Serbia had been moving toward a high level of civilization
in art and music. The kings of the Nemanjic family promulgated enduring
laws, founded monasteries and encouraged learning and the visual arts. At
the very end of the century, at the peak of development, religious heresies
and persecutions began to destroy national unity and made way for an
ultimate Turkish victory in the next century. (Ref. 206)

ITALY

In the early part of the century Italy was subjected to repeated German
invasions. The Holy Roman Emperor, Otto IV, completed a conquest of
southern Italy, in spite of his excommunication by the pope. When Otto was
deposed by the German princes in 1211, Frederick II, grandson of both
Frederick Barbarossa and the Norman Roger II, was elected king of
Germany and he was crowned emperor of the Roman domains in 1220. As
he was the monarch of Sicily, he had to divide his time in managing affairs
in both Italy and Germany. He often kept court in Sicily and founded the
University of Naples and enlarged the medical school at Salerno.
Continuing an already established regulation of medicine, Frederick
specified that before one could apply for a medical license, he should study
logic for three years, medicine and surgery for five years, practice with an
experienced physician for one year and then be publicly examined by the
masters at Salerno. In Bologna the Dominican friar, Theodoric, pioneered
anesthesia, using sponges soaked in opiates applied to the nose. (Ref. 222)

At Frederick II's death in 1250 his empire began to collapse but the great
part of Italy was already a mosaic of city-states. Venice was the great trade
center of Europe, with pepper, cinnamon, saffron, cloves, ginger, cardamon,
medicines and silks coming through there from Constantinople. Genoa, as
an enemy of Venice, was also powerful but since part of western Europe
had stopped growing grain, Genoa had to use most of its shipping to supply
its own people with food. A typical household of ten (with servants) used
five and one-half tons of grain per year and a town of 2,000 or 3,000 thus
had to have 1,000 to 1,500 tons of grain per annum and this was the
produce of 10,000 acres of land. Genoa occasionally cooperated some with
the Venetians in bringing in carpets, tapestries and fruits from or through
Egypt, but in 1264 the Venetians destroyed the Genoese fleet at Trepani.
(Ref. 125, 211, 137, 222)

Attempts to reunify Italy were continued by Frederick II's bastard heir,
Manfred, the new King of Sicily, but he found himself at odds with the
pope, who offered the Sicilian crown to Edmund, son of Henry III of
England. Later, however, the head of the papal state financed the French
king's brother, Charles of Anjou, in an attack on Manfred, who was killed in
the battle of Benevento in 1266. Charles then tried to develop his own

empire in Italy, North Africa and the tip of the southern peninsula of
Greece, where there was a remnant of the old Latin Empire. Throughout
most of the century the Two Sicilies remained the richest, most advanced
and tightly organized state in Europe as it remained under Angevin control.
In A.D. 1282, however, Charles and Sicily were conquered by forces from
Aragon in Spain| footnote], helped by a local revolt called the Sicilian
Vespers, claiming French insolence and cruelty. The end result was that
Aragon's Peter III assumed the Sicilian kingship while the Catalan
mercenaries went on to Turkey.

These were the famous mercenary Forces of the Catalan Company, who
destroyed an army of chiefly French knights, using crossbows. (Ref. 279)

Silk production had begun in northern Italy and Milan, a city of 200,000
ruled in this century by the Guelf, Della Torre, was already famous for its
metal work. Wool was exported to the East and textile industries were
developing rapidly. With respect to this there is an interesting sidelight.
Local wool, chiefly from Tuscany, was of poor quality and the best cloth,
on which the Tuscan merchants became rich, was bought as raw wool from
Spain, Minorca, Africa, or from the Coswolds of England. In this way the
shepherds of those far away isles helped to create the fortunes of the Bardi,
the Medici and the Frescobaldi, who in turn financed the coming
Renaissance. The wool-based wealth of Florence led to the establishment of
the great Florentine banking families and the whole apparatus of modern
commerce such as trading associations, modern company shares, credit
systems and the like. (Ref. 137, 213) Additional Notes

The last half of this century was the period of the famous journeys of the
Polo family of Venice. The brothers Nicolo and Maffeo traveled in Asia and
China in 1255 and 1256 and made a second journey with Nicolo's son,
Marco, beginning in 1271. Marco, after extensive service and traveling for
the Mongol Khan in Asia, China, Burma and India, returned to Europe in
1295, only to be imprisoned by the Genoese. On page 753 there is a map
showing these travels.

CENTRAL EUROPE

It is clear from the preceding paragraphs that this was the century of the
Mongol invasions of Europe. Those nomads from the East were never
decisively beaten in Europe but withdrew finally by their own choice.
Europeans had ignored the light Asian and the tall slender Arab horses and
developed a large, massive, slow breed of their own to carry the heavy
armor inherited from Roman times. Thus, they were no match in battle
against the invading, nimble horses of Asia. Furthermore the same defect
was apparent in the Crusades when the large European horses perished in
droves, contributing to the general defeats. (Ref. 122)

GERMANY

After the installation of Otto IV, son of Henry the Lion, as emperor, the
empire rapidly lost prestige to France and in effect became a loose
confederacy of magnates giving little actual power to the emperor. (Ref.
137) This situation changed somewhat with the ascension of Emperor
Frederick II, who, as noted above, was the grandson of Frederick
Barbarossa and of King Roger II of Sicily. Frederick had been raised in
Palmero as a proud Sicilian, speaking Latin, Greek, Italian, French and
Arabic and with a passion for science, astronomy, falconry and ornithology.
He felt that Islam was a superior world and he had Moslem mercenaries and
a harem. It was he who introduced Arabic numerals and algebra to
Christians and he alternately cajoled and fought with the papacy, although
he would not allow his own people to deviate from the straight Catholic line
and actually helped to promote the Inquisition. Frederick, himself, was a
"free-thinker" and some accused him of being more Moslem than Christian.
He protected Jews in spite of the pope's orders. Forced to start a Christian
Crusade in 1228 he set out against his friend, the Sultan of Egypt (who had
just given him a giraffe) and he came back from Egypt with a secret ten
year lease on Jerusalem, Bethlehem and Nazareth and tried to take over
Rome as his capital. As a result of all this, neither he nor the pope was in a
position to help King Bela of Hungary when the Mongols arrived. (Ref. 27)

When Hungary fell to the Mongols, great fear penetrated Germany and it
was rumored that the "Tartars" were the lost - tribes of Israel and that Jews
were smuggling arms to them, with the result that at several border posts

Jewish merchants were indiscriminately slaughtered. Frederick II blamed
King Bela for incompetence and held the pope responsible for placing
Christians in jeopardy. At Frederick II's death, the Hohenstaufen line fell
and the nobles of Germany further weakened the monarchy and let
Germany fall from the leadership of Europe. The imperial administration
was in utter ruin by 1268 when the Austrian Habsburg, Rudolph, became
emperor. The true "Roman Empire of the German People" never did re-
emerge. (Ref. 27, 221) (See "Confederation of the Rhine", map)

In 1230 heathen Prussia was conquered by the Order of Teutonic Knights
and in 1237 they also took Kurland, Livland and Estland and began to
colonize those districts. In Brandenburg, Berlin was founded in 1240 on the
site of an older Slav settlement. Bavaria, at that time, was ruled as several
separate fiefs under various members of the Wittelsbach family.

The German people in the 13th century were morally still half pagan and
their Christianity was half a cover for territorial robbery in the east. Their
manners were crude, the laws chaotic. The Hohenstauf en rule during most
of the century was the most brilliant of the medieval civilizations but it was
already beginning to decay. Leprosy was on the increase and most cities had
hospitals outside the city limits for those patients. The greatest German
scholar of the Middle Ages was St. Albert the Great, a Dominican monk,
who some believe was on a par with St. Thomas Aquinas. By the end of the
century the peasants' lot had improved considerably due to better general
economic conditions, more arable land, better markets and trade. It was the
city burgher, however, who proved the most dynamic and also the most
disruptive element of medieval society. The city became the cradle of a new
middle class, a new corporative legal code, a new economic system and a
new philosophy of life. Several German city leagues were formed -
Rhenish, Swabian and the Hanseatic League. The new economic system
was based on money, not on land. (Ref. 177)

AUSTRIA

Another Frederick, the Duke of Austria and the last of the Babenbergs, took
advantage of a lull in the Mongols' advance (they were resting across the

Danube) to take unoccupied areas of Hungary, although in many areas the
Hungarians resisted. When the winter of 1241 came, the Danube froze (an
unusual event) and the Mongols crossed over, sacking Gran (now
Esztergom) and Buda and then headed for Austria itself, laying waste all
lands as far as Wiener Neustadt and their scouts were on the outskirts of
Vienna. It was then, in December, 1241 that Ogedai Khan died and the
home regime at Karakorum was temporarily run by his wife, Toregene, as
regent, until new elections could be held. The invasion of Europe had to be
postponed, as the Mongols went back to Mongolia. (Ref. 27) This allowed
Frederick to continue his attacks on the Hungarian Magyars but in one of
the battles of 1246, he was killed. The Bohemian King Ottocar Premysl
then moved in and captured Vienna, Carinthia and Carniola. In 1272 the
German princes elected Rudolf of Habsburg as the German king and he
promptly reclaimed the Austrian territory from Bohemia and thus both the
Habsburgs and Austria made their true entrance on the European stage. It
was another 10 years, however, before King Rudolf actually defeated the
Bohemians, who had been trying again to seize power. Rudolf then gave
both Austria and Styria to his sons. (Ref. 206)

HUNGARY

Hungary's written constitution, "The Golden Seal", dates from 1222. It
limited the king's royal powers and was comparable to the English Magna
Carta. The royal authority decreased even more with the long reign of a
silly king, Andrew II. His brighter son, Bela IV, was trying to recoup the
royal influence before the calamity of the Mongol invasion. He had more or
less graciously received the Cumans, who were fleeing ahead of the
advancing Mongols and he had even taken title as King of the Cumans. The
Cuman Kotian and his last 40,000 warriors had sought asylum in Hungary
in return for conversion to Christianity. By 1240 the Mongols were ready to
move again and within a few weeks southern Russia had been destroyed
and the Mongols had reached the Carpathians surrounding Hungary. In the
following year the Hungarian campaign began under General Batu. Bela
appealed to the pope for aid, but as we noted earlier he was busy defending
himself against the Holy Roman Emperor and sent no help. While part of
the invading army turned north to take Lithuania and Poland and then

wheeled south to enter Hungary from the north, the main Mongol army
came straight west through the Carpathian passes while still others came up
from the south. Towns were burned, churches pillaged and women raped.
The main army came down from the mountains through the snow at 60
miles a day’ King Bela fought but his Cuman allies, after some
misunderstanding, would not help him and neither would Austria. It
followed that with their usual trickery and superior tactics the Mongols
soon surrounded Bela's 100,000 men and killed 60,000 of them. This
Mongol slaughter and the famine which followed cost Hungary 1/2 of its
population. After his defeat King Bela IV fled through the mountains
toward Austria but then was taken prisoner by Duke Frederick because of
past differences. His freedom cost the Hungarian king all the money he had,
the Hungarian crown jewels and three of his western "departments". Only
then could Bela and his family travel south to the safety of Croatia. The
neighboring Bulgarian King Koloman had also fled to Croatia where he
subsequently died of wounds incurred in a brief skirmish with the Mongols
as they went through his country. The slaughter in this entire region Europe
ended only with the Asiatics' withdrawal at the end of 1241. (Ref. 27)

After the Mongol retreat the country of Hungary was gradually re-peopled
in part with Germans, Slovaks, Croats, Vlachs and Russians, although the
basic population still remained essentially Magyar. King Bela IV eventually
returned with more Cumans and some Romanians and he attempted
reconstruction along with the building of forts for defense. Bela's son,
Stephen, had married a Cuman princess to cement the Cuman relationship
and when Bela died in 1270 the young man reigned as Stephen V for only
two years. He was succeeded by Ladislas IV, who rejected western ways
and was known as "Ladislas the Cuman". When the barons and bishops
passed a law requiring the king to convert his Cumans truly to Christianity,
he arrested the papal legate and married two Cuman princesses from the
court of Nogai of the Golden Horde in Russia. The Mongol armies returned
to Europe in 1285, attacking both Poland and Hungary but the attacks failed
due to poor conception and disorganization. Although the countrysides were
sacked, the cities held. Ladislas, the last of the Arpad Dynasty, was
assassinated in 1290, dying without male issue. (Ref. 27, 126)

CZECHOSLOVAKIA

In 1241 when the Mongols came, both Bohemia and Moravia were ruled by
Wenceslas I (1230-1253), although subject to the German emperor's
control. When the northern Mongol armies went south to join Batu and
Subedei after the battle of Leignetz (to be discussed in a later paragraph),
they burned and killed to such an extent that later both Moravian and
Silesian towns had to be resettled by German immigrants. Certain tax
benefits helped to entice them there. (Ref. 27) Subsequently, under Ottocar
IT (1253-1269), Bohemia had great prosperity with the opening of great
silver mines, which made that one of the wealthiest countries of the late
Middle Ages. Ottocar even expanded to acquire Austria under his control
for a short period. It was fear of this Premysl king that led the German
princes to then elect Rudolf of Habsburg as their king. Ottocar ref used to
recognize him and the Diet of Regesburg of 1274 therefore declared all of
Ottocar's acquisitions void. He was finally defeated and killed in battle with
Rudolf on the Marchfield in 1278. The Bohemian throne went to Wenceslas
II, a boy of seven, with Otto of arandenburg acting as regent. (Ref. 222)

SWITZERLAND

Although it may not have been clearly defined in previous chapters, the
country we now know as Switzerland was originally the home of mixed
Celtic, Teutonic and Italic tribes, including the Helvetii, Raeti, Leopontii
and Alemanni. Separated by vast mountain ranges, many "cantons"
developed in the valleys. The entire area was under control of the
Habsburgs until after Rudolf's death in 1291, and the cantons were then
caught up in the dynastic strife of the Germans. At that time, three of the
forest cantons - Uri, Nidwalden and Schwyz, formed the "Everlasting
League" to give mutual aid. Soon other cantons - Lucerne, Zurich and
Contance, joined the League and they had the beginnings of the nation of
Switzerland.

WESTERN EUROPE

By this time some areas of western Europe had stopped growing grain.
France had put its land, in part, into wine growing and elsewhere farmers
had turned more to stock-breeding. Another factor was the cheap water
transportation of grain from Germany's east along the Baltic to northern and
western Europe rather than to the southern areas. There had been a shift
from piracy to trade along the Atlantic coast, where Vikings had previously
raided. (Ref. 279, 211) The western European population rise continued
throughout this century.

SPAIN

In this and the preceding century, Cistercian orders in Galicia in northwest
Spain induced peasants to lease church owned waste land for 2% of the
capital value, with the leases supposedly to last for three generations. This
was to make much trouble later, as we shall see in the chapter on the 17th
century. (Ref. 213) Castile, originally a tributary of the kings of Leon, was
permanently united to Leon in 1230 and soon controlled more than one-half
of the Iberian peninsula. It became a truly monarchial state under Alfonso X
(1252-1284), although he soon gave lavish concessions to the nobles and
therefore lost some power for the crown. The Cortes appeared as an
assembly of nobles allowed to petition the king and, in a sense, to legislate,
thus anticipating the English parliament. Sheep became the big crop of that
area and by 1300 there were 1,500,000 of these animals in Castile alone.
Mental life stirred and six universities were founded, while bull fighting
became a common sport. (Ref. 8, 211)

The Kingdom of Navarre remained under French rule from A.D. 1234 to
1316. Even though many Jews had fled southern Spain in the last century,
overall the peninsula- still had the largest and most prosperous Jewish
population in Europe. Sephardic Judaism included diplomats, tax collectors,
physicians, astronomers and translators. Even in the north, however, some
troubles were developing in the religious field as the Dominicans began
preaching just south of the Pyrenees. On the coast at Barcelona, native
Sailers, with Jewish money, began an extensive slave trade in Moorish
prisoners and that city became a most active Mediterranean port. Ramon Lu

II, of this area, was the greatest Spanish intellectual figure of the period -
poet, novelist, educator, scientist and traveler.

In the middle east of Spain the Aragon Empire was strengthened by the
commercial wealth of Catalonia and Valencia and by 1281 this empire had
taken the Balearics and then Sicily, as Peter III defeated Charles of Anjou.
Peter's nobles formed the "Union for Liberty", however, and curtailed much
of his power. The next king, Alfonso III, had to grant the so-called Magna
Charta of Aragon. (Ref. 8)

In Moslem Spain, the Almohades were defeated in 1212 at the battle of Las
Navas de Tolosa by the Christians under Alfonso VIII (of Castile) and were
soon expelled from most of Spain. Part of the Moslem's troubles derived
from the existence of many diverse, often antagonistic factions from many
origins, as we have noted previously. By 1278 the Emirate of Granada
existed only as a small coastal strip adjacent to Gibralter, while the
Kingdom of Castile controlled the remainder of Spain except for Navarre
and Aragon. Intermarriages of Spanish and Moors had remained common,
at least up until this century, but now the preaching of the Crusades and
papal propaganda prepared the Spanish mind for intolerance and later
fanaticism. (Ref. 137, 196)

Up until 1291 the Moslems had prevented Christian vessels from going
through the strait of Gibralter, but in that year a Genoese sea captain seized
control of the strait and thereafter Atlantic and Mediterranean sea routes
could be integrated. (Ref. 279)

PORTUGAL

Sancho II, beginning his reign in 1223, was deposed by the pope in 1245
and the throne was taken by his brother, Afonso III. Portugal increased its
borders to its modern size and the port of Lisbon became its capital. Under
Diniz (1279) one of its best loved and greatest rulers, culture bloomed and
Portugese changed from a Galican dialect -to a literary language. The
Portugese navy was started and the University of Lisbon was founded in
1290. (Ref. 222, 119)

FRANCE
NOTE: Insert Map: France in A.D. 1259

By the beginning of this century in France, elective monarchy had been
replaced by hereditary monarchy. The turning point of the French royalty
was the conquest of Normandy in 1204, which meant the destruction of the
Angevin or Anglo-Norman Empire on the French side of the English
Channel. After 1214 England controlled only Gascony on the continent.
Much of Languedoc was obtained by the French king in a campaign against
the Albigensian heretics (1209-1229). (Ref. 8) Philip II also finally defeated
Otto IV of Germany, thus starting the decline of the Holy Roman Empire
and allowing the beginning of strong, present day France. Following Philip
came Louis IX, St. Louis, who participated in the Crusades. De Gramont
(Ref. 74) says the Crusades were essentially a French affair and partially
exhausted the nation's colonial potential. The beginnings of industrialism
created an economic revolution with resulting class struggles leading finally
to class wars. Peasants carrying religious banners fought against barons and
priests alike. Nobility was first conferred by gift in 19270 and generally
could be purchased, in this century. (Ref. 217) Nevertheless, this minor
economic revolution stimulated the minds and energies of men and was the
making of modern Europe. Additional Notes

The French language was spoken by the elite abroad before the French
nation learned it. Marco Polo wrote the account of his travels in French.
Since the time of Hugh Capet (10th century) about half a dozen dialects
struggled for preponderance. The Crusade against the Albigensian heretics,
for instance, was less a religious struggle than France 's version of a north-
south civil war between the langue d'oc (language of the south) and the
"langue d'oil" (language of the north). The latter won. (Ref. 74)

The whole of France now used the vertical plane windmill as a source of

power. By 1200 Montpellier, on the southern coast, had become the premier
medical school of all Europe.

THE NETHERLANDS AND BELGIUM

The Hanseatic League continued an active existence on the Baltic Sea and
their ships were now using a new, true rudder and bowsprit, which allowed
better close- hauled sailing. (Ref. 222) Holland, which had been a part of
the Frank Kingdom from the 3rd to the 9th centuries, then an area of
German feudal fiefs, began to have some unity in this 13th century. The
Hague became the capital in 1250 and Amsterdam became a great free port
in about 1297. Rotterdam had also began to rise in importance, with
increasing trade with England. Hereafter Holland played a large part in the
economic world. The Zuider Zee, which was originally a large, shallow lake
in a swamp, became swollen with floods in this period and broke through to
the North Sea, thereafter to be an arm of the ocean.

In Flanders the textile industry assumed a large scale, semi-capitalistic
structure in which thousands of workers produced goods for investors of
capital. Modern Belgium came chiefly from this Flanders territory. The
people were Flemish, speaking a low German and Walloons, who were a
mixture of Germans and French on a Celtic base, speaking a dialect of
French. Throughout the Middle Ages they were variously dominated now
by the English and now by the French.

BRITISH ISLES

Additional Notes

ENGLAND

As the century opened King John (Lackland) lost all of the crown's
possessions on the continent north of the Loire and got into serious trouble
with the pope. To increase his difficulties his nobles insisted on limiting his
powers, forcing him to reluctantly sign the Magna Charta, which was to
have far reaching and long-lasting effect in the entire English speaking
world. That document freed the Church of England from the monarchy,
established the principles of Habeas Corpus and trial by jury, increased the
power of the purse to Parliament and transformed an absolute monarchy
into a limited and constitutional one. When King John died of dysentery in

the next year, his nine year old son was crowned as Henry III. As he
matured, Henry developed a love of splendor and unfortunately contributed
very little to the English nation. His son, Edward I, who became king in
1272, however, was the best of the Plantagenet line. Because he established
a Code of Laws, he has been called "the English Justinian" and he also was
the foster father of the House of Commons and the first truly English king.
He died in a campaign against Scotland.

There were a number of Englishmen of this century whose names live on.
There was Stephen Langston, one of the great men of the early century, a
builder of rights against royal, baronial and at times ecclesiastical
pretensions. And there was Hubert de Burgh, a defender of the monarch but
a solid champion of the rights of all Englishmen. It was a period of
increased papal demands but these were resisted by Robert Grosseteste,
scholar, scientist and saint, who anticipated Wycliff. It was the time of
Simon de Montfort, who led the baronial revolt and of Roger Bacon, who
described the magnetic needle and reading glasses and predicted such
things as the steamship and airplane. He is usually given credit for the
invention of gun-powder, although there is no concrete evidence of this and
we have noted that the Chinese had it in the 11th century. (Ref. 260)

Cambridge and Oxford universities were founded but all books were in
Latin and there were few of these. By the end of the century London was a
city of 40,000 people even though England was still 90% rural. There were
8,000,000 sheep in the country, more sheep than people and there was sheep
cheese on every table. In spite of this, there were repeated famines
throughout the century. Coal was mined at Newcastle for the first time in
this period. By the end of the century all Jews had been expelled from

SCOTLAND

By this time the Scottish nobility had been largely Normanized. All through
the first half of the century there was poverty, war with England and war
with Norway over the Hebrides, but Alexander III (A.D. 1249) at last
established friendly relations with England and gave Scotland a temporary

golden age of prosperity and peace. He had become king at the age of eight,
with the actual ruler for the first six years being Walter Camyn, Earl of
Menteith. Becoming of age, Alexander tried to buy the Hebrides from King
Haakon of Norway but was laughed at and then subjected to an attack on
the Firth of Clyde by the Norwegian navy. A great storm destroyed most of
that fleet and Haakon had to retreat. Three years later, by the Treaty of
Perth, Man and the Western Isles were given to Scotland for a monetary
arrangement. (Ref. 170)

At Alexander's death, in the absence of direct male heirs, his granddaughter,
Margaret, the Maid of Norway[footnote] became a child queen in 1286,
with six guardians to govern in her name. All but one of these were of
Norman descent. In 1290 she left Norway for Scotland, only to die on the
way, and this paved the way for a great Scottish civil war over the
succession with both Robert Bruce and John Balliol contesting. There was
chaos for two years until Edward of England put the Norman John Balliol
(formerly de Ballieul) on the throne as a vassal puppet for England. When
Edward attempted to completely subdue the Scots, as he had previously
successfully done with the Welsh, he met fierce resistance led by William
Wallace and Robert Bruce, in multiple, bloody battles. Wallace was
eventually hung, drawn, beheaded and quartered in the lovely fashion of the
English of that day. After humiliating and slaughtering many Scottish
people, Edward I even captured his puppet king, John, in 1296, and for 10
years Scotland had no king. Although under British domination, Scotland
still remained, in a sense, free and was actually more disposed toward
France, a situation which continued intermittently for some 300 years. What
had once been forts or fortified villages now became trading burghs, as a
mercantile and agricultural economy replaced the ancient pastoral tribalism.
Of incidental interest is the fact that leprosy was rampant in Scotland at that
time. (Ref. 49, 170)

Alexander had managed to marry his daughter, Margaret, to Eric, son of
King Magnus of Norway, and this child was their offspring. (Ref. 38)

IRELAND

This was a century of turmoil and destruction for Ireland as the Irish lost
their liberty to England as well as suffering repeated famines. The Anglo-
Norman sections prospered while the remainder of the country despaired
and the cleavage between the two peoples became very marked, a situation
which remains in this 20th century. (Ref. 119, 222)

WALES

It was a time of tribal union and bardic poetry in Wales. A national revival
was led by Llewelyn, Prince of north Wales, against the English Henry III
but there was no great bloodshed until the latter was succeeded by Edward
I. He waged war against the Welsh, using the long bow, which the English
had available after A.D. 1200. Cavalry was useless in Wales but archers
could score with the long shots, loosing five to six arrows in the time
required for only one cross-bow shot. After many battles, Wales was finally
subdued and made a part of England, in 1281, which is not to say that real
peace was obtained. Coal mining records in Wales go back to this 13th
century. Additional Notes

SCANDINAVIA

NORWAY

Haakon the Old (1217-1263) ruled ably and generously and brought
Iceland, Greenland and the Faeroes temporarily under Norwegian power.
This was the era of Snorre Sturlason, who wrote Heimskringla, a history of
Norwegian kings which was to become the chief source of early Norwegian
history and the prose Edda, about Norse mythology. Haakon V (1299-1319)
was the last male of the line of Fairhair. (Ref. 34, 222)

SWEDEN

The Swedish throne was on an elective basis. Earl Birger, a prime minister
while his weak brother was actually king, abolished serfdom, established a
reign of law, founded Stockholm and started the Folkung Dynasty by
putting his son Waldemar on the throne in 1250 and then acting as his
regent. He attempted to set up a European type of feudalism, establishing
his other sons in quasi-independent duchies. One of these sons, Magnus
Ladulos, overthrew Waldemar but continued his father's feudal innovations
although family feuding continued. Meanwhile the merchants of Sweden
became rich through mining and trade.

Until the middle of the 13th century Sweden had supplied 1/2 of Europe
with herring, but then the cities of the Hanseatic League (chiefly German)
took over this industry. Fish was always a more important food than meat
for millions of people. Cod, haddock, pottock and ling all were preserved
primarily by drying, but herring could not be handled this way because it
was too oily. It had to be salted. In Scandinavia, such meat as was available
was beaten and then exposed to a clear, cool wind, for preservation. (Ref.
122, 211)

DENMARK

Denmark had the largest population of the Scandinavian countries at this
time and claimed a part of what is now the Scania province in southern
Sweden. The Danes burst into activity at the beginning of this century,
winning a brief supremacy in the Baltic trade. Waldemar II the Victorious
temporarily conquered northeast Germany and waged three crusades for the
church against the heathen Baltic states of Livonia and Estonia, penetrating
the Gulf of Finland and making the southern Baltic a Danish "lake".
Waldemar is remembered by many because of his marriage to an exiled
Bohemian princess, Dagmar, famous in Danish folklore. But the Danes
suffered a crippling defeat in the 1220s and the German Baltic towns (later
to be called the "Hanse") took over the Baltic and even the North Sea, also
shutting out the Flemish by 1275. At a meeting of nobles in 1282 King Eric
V was made to sign Denmark's first Royal Charter - the Magna Charta of
Den- mark - and the Danehof was established as a national parliament. Eric

had to promise to call a national assembly once a year and to cooperate with
the nobles. (Ref. 117)

FINLAND

It was a bad century for Finland. There were continued, intermittent
beatings by Swedish armies who first conquered and baptized the
Tavastians and then forty years later did the same for the Karelians. In the
meantime the Principality of Novgorod had seized a large part of Karelia in
1220. (Ref. 89)

OVERSEAS SCANDINAVIAN CENTERS

Iceland remained the most active literary center in the Scandinavian world.
The colonies on Greenland also thrived and more will be written about
them under NORTH AMERICA, this chapter.

EASTERN EUROPE

SOUTHERN BALTIC AREA (See map in this section of the next chapter)

Lithuanians and Latvians were remnants of the eastern Balts, but all these
people had gradually been Slavonized in the 5 or 6 centuries leading up to
this 13th. We noted in the discussion above that the Danes conquered and
tried to Christianize Livonia and Estonia early in the century. Tallinn, which
was a Danish castle, was the Estonian name for the town of Reval, citadel
of the Danish king, Waldemar II. Later, German merchants transformed it
into a port for the Hanseatic League. The Danes were followed by the
German Teutonic Knights along with various crusaders, monks, and
Knights of the Sword, offering either conversion to Christianity or
decapitation. They forged continually eastward almost completely
exterminating the pagan Prussians and thinning out the Livonians. Teutonic

orders were established in Riga as early as 1201, causing the disintegration
of the Curonians and Semigallians, who were two of some eleven separate,
Prussian tribes. The Lithuanians, alone, resisted the Teutonic Knights and
absorbed the Knights of the Sword, so that in a sense they protected the
Russians. Written history of the Balts begins only at that point, as the
Lithuanians consolidated themselves into a powerful state. Various
Lithuanian tribes were first united about the middle of the century under
Mindaugas. He was baptized a Christian in 1251 but after he and his two
sons were assassinated in 1263, the people reverted to paganism. All Balts
worshiped a goddess of fate, Laima, closely connected to the sun but they
also had multiple demi-gods and goddesses. After they finally became
Christianized permanently the Lithuanians became chiefly Roman Catholic
while the Latvians became divided between Catholicism and Lutheranism.
(Ref. 61)

At the beginning of the century in a period of some German civil wars, the
Danish king also seized Holstein, Mechlenburg, Pomerania and the cities of
Lubeck, Hamburg and Bremen, but after 1220, Frederick IT defeated
Denmark and reconquered these lands, thereafter redoubling the efforts to
colonize them. An abundance of grain from the Baltic region helped to
supply famine areas in the rest of northern Europe and barley malt allowed
a large brewing industry to develop in Hamburg and adjacent areas. (Ref.
222) In this entire northern zone along the Baltic it was difficult to keep
farm animals alive through the hard winters and there were long periods
when no fresh meat or fish could be had, so there was much salting of meat
- chiefly pork and fish - and herring was the most important in the salt fish
trade. One could buy 20 pounds of meat for 5 cents, but then had to use 2
more for 2 pounds of salt, plus some peppercorns, cloves, etc., for the
preservation. In all medieval cooking something had to be used to absorb
the salt - bread crumbs, grain, spices, etc. in the form of sauces. (Ref. 211)

There were still some nine separate principalities in Poland under four
dukedoms.

In 1241 the northern prong of the invading Mongols defeated both the Poles
and the Teutonic Knights. The Mongols had sent only two tumens to take
Lithuania and Poland with an aim to draw the northern European armies

away from Hungary, but the Polish armies, under Vladimir, the Palatine of
Sandomir and Cracow were no match for them and Cracow was abandoned
on their approach and burned by the invaders. King Boleslav fled with his
family and treasures to Hungary. The Mongol generals, Baidar and Kadan,
met at Breslau, the capital of Silesia, where the citizens had already burned
their own city and retired into a citadel. A final battle developed at Liegnitz
(now known as Legnica) where the invaders met a 25,000 man army
assembled by Henry of Silesia, many untrained and ill-equipped,
contingents from Oppeln and Moravia, similarly poorly prepared,
conscripts from Great Poland and detachments of the Knights Templar from
France and the Hospitallers. The Mongols won and after the battle they cut
an ear from each dead enemy's body and sent nine large sacks of them to
General Batu, as a present. Although some European historians refer to
Liegnitz as a Polish victory, this is untrue and due to misunderstandings
encountered in translating oriental characters and reports. (Ref. 27)

After the invasion and the Mongol withdrawal the Germans immigrated
into Poland, giving a strong admixture of the German language, laws and
blood. At the same time Poland welcomed thousands of Jews fleeing from
pogroms in Germany. At the end of the century Poland united with
Bohemia to form a single country- under King Wenceslas II of Bohemia.

RUSSIA

"The Mongol invasion was perhaps the most traumatic event in Russian
history."[ footnote] After smashing the central Asian Khwarizm, the first
wave of Mongols, led by generals Jebe[ footnote] and Subedei, sent a corps
to reconnoiter southern Russia in 1221, delivering crushing defeats to
Georgians, Alans, Cumans and south Russian princes. (Ref. 137) This was
not easily done, however. The main Mongol force crossed the Caucasus
mountains in the winter with some difficulty and descended the north slope
to find a Cuman army of 50,000 men, led by the sons of Khan Kotian,
awaiting them. With the Cumans were Bulgars, Khazars and Alans
(descendants of the Scythians). Bribed by the wily Mongols with gold and
horses, the Cumans retreated in the night, leaving their allies to be
slaughtered by the Asians. The latter then simply followed the Cumans and

massacred them just north of the Sea of Azov, in 1222. (Ref. 8, 27) While
Subedei was defeating those Cumans, Jebe rode west to the Don River. It is
of interest that while on the shores of the Sea of Azov, Subedei came across
some Venetians, who discovered that the Mongols rode with fine silk under
their light weight armor and carried physicians, diplomats and interpreters
with them and had an Armenian bishop and merchants who were already
printing cheap Bibles and selling them to the locals. All this impressed the
Venetians who then offered themselves as spies in the west. To seal this new
alliance, Subedei raized the Genoese trading station at Sudak.

Quotation from Times Atlas of World History, (Ref. 8), page 114

Another authority, Lamb (Ref. 87), spells this name "Chepe")

Rejoining Jebe on the Don, Subedei recruited 5,000 Brodniki (nomad
fishermen on the lower Don) as mercenaries and then proceeded to the
Dniester where his troops patrolled for several months, while his Mandarin
scholars made maps of southern Russia and organized all information from
their intelligence sources. Their reconnaissance then complete, they started
eastward to go home. As they did so, however, spies brought in word that
around and behind them the remnants of the Cumans had accumulated a
new army, including forces from various Russian principalities. Greatly
outnumbered, the Mongols could have easily outrun the combined armies,
but they had also promised the Great Khan Genghis that they would destroy
the Volga Bulgars enroute home, so they had to delay the oncoming
Russians and Cumans by leaving some 1,000 men as a rear-guard on the
Dniepner, under the command of Hamabek. In due time these men did their
delaying job but were all killed, down to the last man. At the River Kalka
the main Mongol army allowed the speeding, spread-out enemies to catch
up with them and using their usual guile and splitting tactics, the Asians
soon demolished the entire foe. Besides the thousands who went in
backward flight, there were 40,000 Russians dead, including 6 princes and
70 nobles, all defeated by less than 18,000 Mongols and 5,000 Brodniki.
This was in A.D. 1223. A little later, joined by another son of Genghis
named Jochi and 10,000 reinforcements, they did strike the upper Volga and
defeated the Kama Bulgars before moving on east into Asia. (Ref. 27)

Fifteen years after that initial reconnaissance, the Mongols returned but
there were two main obstacles to be overcome before entering European

Russia. The first was still Bulgar, at the junction of the Kama and Volga
rivers, which had grown rich with the fur trade. Slavs and Finns had been
imported to work for the Bulgars, but the Mongols were not particular and
killed all of Bulgar's 50,000 inhabitants. The city has never been rebuilt and
the Bulgar state became a Mongol vassal. The second obstacle was a
rejuvenated Cuman Kipchak group in the forests at the lower Volga, all of
whom were slaughtered by the generals Manku and Budjek. (Ref. 27) Thus,
as the Asians came into Russia they systematically eliminated in sequence
the Volga Bulgars (1237), the great Principality of Vladimer (1238), the
Cumans and Alans (1239) and finally the south Russian principalities. The
army then split into two prongs to enter central Europe. (Ref. 137)

To go back for a moment, plans had begun for this attack in 1236, with
several corps of Chinese and Persian engineers, 20,000 conscripts and
50,000 experienced soldiers of the Mongol army which included no less
than ten princes. At the beginning of the winter of 1237 generals Batu and
Subedei had an army of 120,000 men ready to cross the frozen Volga and
enter Russia, proper. As they drove into the center of that country there
developed a reign of true terror. There was mass murder and destruction,
then multitudes of prisoners and booty, with the targets including Moscow,
Vladimir, Dimitrov, Tver, Rostov and Yaroslav among others. With the
spring thaw, Batu stopped 60 miles short of Novgorod and turned back
south to join Subedei. Although thus spared at the moment, Novgorod had
to beat off repeated attacks of Germans and Swedes. The hero of these latter
victories was Alexander Nevsky, Prince of Novgorod, who defeated the
Teutonic Knights and saved the identity of north Russia. The story is that
Nevsky lured the invading Germans onto the frozen surface of Lake Peipus,
which broke beneath the weight of their horses and armor. (Ref. 27) To
continue to elude Mongol devastation, however, Nevsky soon had to begin
to pay continued tribute to the Asians and recognize their overlordship.
(Ref. 8, 137)

During the summer of 1239 the Mongols rested in the western Ukraine
while fresh herds of horses were brought in from Mongolia. In the
following winter all surrounding nomad nations were taken and plundered.
Prisoners of Cumans, Circassians and Alans almost outnumbered their
Mongol captors and most were sold into slavery, chiefly to the new sultan

of Egypt to augment his Turkoman army. By 1240 the completion of the
Russian invasion was initiated with the destruction of Cherigov and then
Kiev. From there it was on to Poland and Hungary as detailed in the
paragraphs above on CENTRAL EUROPE and the SOUTHERN BALTIC
AREA.

After the Mongols withdrew from Europe upon the death of the Great
Khan, life in Russia was reduced to a barbarous level and to add insult to
injury, the Mongols left power- ful revenue collecting agents and a pattern
of ruthless terror and efficient extortion. (Ref. 8) Batu went back to Sarai on
the Volga, 60 miles south of Astrakhan, where his brother, Sinkur, had been
left in command. Here Batu established his capital and remained to organize
a new empire. Subedei and the other princes went back to Mongolia. Sarai
was soon to be a capital which rivalled Karakorum, itself, and Batu's empire
subsequently became known as the "Golden Horde". When Batu died in
1258, his brother Berke, a Moslem, took control and started a type of civil
war against another Mongolian army headed by Hulegu, in the mid-east.
Thus the great Mongol domain began to fragment. Many of Berke's soldiers
were Mamluks up from Egypt. At the end of the century Berke and his
successor, Mangu-Temur, granted high estates to their noyans
(commanders) and reinforced the feudalism that was to paralyze Russia for
the next 600 years. (Ref. 27) In the final divisions, the Khanate of the
Golden Horde included western and southern Russia; the Khanate of the
White Horde occupied the area about the Aral Sea; and the Cheibanid
Khanate (from Khan Cheiban) was located north of the White Horde. (Ref.
137)

The Mongols had made peace with the Russian Church, protected her
property and personnel and in return the church preached submission to the
Asians. The church became immensely rich while the people, as a whole,
remained beaten, humbled, stagnant and poor. Kiev never recovered
sufficiently to resume leadership and control passed from the Ukraine to
"Great Russia" around Moscow and the upper Volga. The first chapter of
Russian statehood, characterized by a blend of Norse politics and Byzantine
religious and cultural influence, had come to an end. (Ref. 135)

Note:There was a highly charged economy with capital accumulation and
long distance trade utilizing bills of exchange and other types of credit,
particularly in Italy, Germany and the Netherlands. (Ref. 260)

Note:The long distance trade of early European capitalism carried on by
the Italian city-states was not an inheritance from the Roman Empire, but
from Islam, under which they might be said to have served an
apprenticeship in trade. (Ref. 292)

Note:Philip II Augustus, already master of Anjou, Brittany and Maine
finally ended the recurrent troubles with Normandy as he took it in 1204.
(Ref. 301) By the second half of the century powerful Italian firms from
Florence, Piacenza, Milan, Rome and Venice were throughout France.
These "foreigners" were intelligent, lively, irritating and detested as much
as envied. (Ref. 260)

Note:The Kingdom of Man was taken over by Scots in the Treaty of Perth
in 1266. (Ref. 301)

Note:The Riccardi family of Lucchese, Italy, financed Edward II's
conquest of Wales. (Ref. 292)

Forward to Europe: A.D. 1301 to 1400
Choose Different Region

1. Intro to Era
2. Africa
3. America

4. Central and Northern Asia
5. The Far East

6. The Indian Subcontinent
7. The Near East

8. Pacific

Europe: A.D. 1301 to 1400

EUROPE
Back to Europe: A.D. 1201 to 1300

Early in this century Europe, as a whole, experienced some extremely
heavy rains and hard, severe winters in an otherwise warm period.
Gunpowder was in use in Flanders, Germany, Italy and Moslem Spain early
in the century and then in France and England in the second half. (Ref. 224,
213) Near the end of the century blast furnaces were developed, first in
Germany and/or the Netherlands, but soon used also in France. Water
powered bellows promoted these furnaces which then produced cast iron
and "steeled" iron for the first time in Europe. Larger, stouter ships were
now available which could sail as safely in winter as summer, making
possible a still greater commercial web all around the continent. Bills of
exchange and credit facilitated this commerce. From this time on European
allowance for the private accumulation of relatively large amounts of
capital made the fundamental superiority of this region over the rest of the
civilized world. (Ref. 260, 279)

The aggressiveness of Christian Knighthood which had sent Germans to the
Gulf of Finland, Crusaders to Jerusalem and attackers against the Moslems
in southern Spain and Italy, came to a slow-down, as the basic foodstuffs
for their support could no longer keep up the pace. The mold-board plow
was not efficient in arid parts of Spain and in the cold of northern and
eastern Europe. (Ref. 279)

The Black Death (plague) killed perhaps 1/3 of the population of Europe.
Pope Clement VI gave a score of 42,866,486 dead, but this may be a mild
exaggeration. (Ref. 122) Crop failures and the severe winters had already
hit northern Europe and depopulation had begun. Then in 1346 a Mongol
prince laid siege to Caffe in the Crimea. His army came down with plague
and he withdrew, but the disease had entered the city and from there it
spread by ship throughout the Mediterranean and ere long to northern and
western Europe. The initial shock of A.D. 1346 was so severe that it spread
not only by flea bite, but also from person to person by inhalation of

droplets from coughing patients. Such lung infections were 100% fatal and
the overall mortality rate probably was 60 to 70% of those infected. (Ref.
140) In this same period, western Europe and Germany had economic
depression, prolonged and devastating wars (England and France) and
political fragmentation (Germany). After recurrent plague epidemics of the
1360s and 1370s there were widespread manpower shortages in central and
western Europe. In contrast, there was a rise and consolidation of powerful
states in eastern Europe and there were far flung results from the mass
production of paper. (Ref. 8)

Cookery for the average European remained, as in the past, prosaic at best.
Alleged feasts at courts consisted chiefly of gorging on meats and wine and
were rare events not available to the common man. There was a great
change in costumes. Men's clothes were shortened and their tunics became
form-fitting, never to return to robes, while women's bodices became more
close-fitting and cut with large décolleté. (Ref. 260)

SOUTHERN EUROPE (See map on page 660)

EASTERN MEDITERRANEAN ISLANDS

The islands close to the eastern shore were involved in some of the Crusade
adventures and in this century Rhodes was taken by the Knights
Hospitalers. Most of the other islands were dominated by Venice. Cyprus
was worst hit by the Black Death in 1347. (Ref. 86, 38, 222)

GREECE

After the murder of their leader, Roger de Flor (see TURKEY, page 659),
the Catalan Company raided through the Balkans and down into Greece,
setting up their own dynasty in Athens in 1311. As the Serbian Empire
grew, most of northern Greece became part of the Serbian Principalities,
while the Despotate of the Morea (Peloponnesus) passed from the Latin
French, who had controlled it in the last century, first to some Aragonese
and then to some free-booters from Navarre. Most of the Aegean islands

were controlled by Venice. Although corrupt and frail, the Byzantine state
was competent enough administratively to stand as somewhat of a bulwark
against the spread of Islam and by the end of the century was making some
inroads back into control of part of Greece.

The Turks of the Ottoman Empire, however, settled the question in 1389 by
overwhelming the Serbian chivalry at the battle of Kossovo and as the
Serbian Empire shriveled, most of Greece went to the Ottoman sultanate. A
few Latin states remained in the west and Venice held on to the southern tip
of Morea. (Ref. 139, 137)

UPPER BALKANS

The mercenary Catalan Company laid waste to Thrace and Macedonia
between 1305 and 1311 but otherwise the early 14th century saw the peak
of progress for all the Slavic peoples in this region. Serbia, under Stephen
Dushan, Czar of the Serbs and Greeks, had a parliament of nobles and
coded laws and a magnificent period of art. (Ref. 8) Militarily the Serbs
conquered Bosnia, Albania, Macedonia and Thessally and put an end to
Bulgar power until Dushan's death, when the empire fell apart. Then Bosnia
(west central Yugoslavia), which came under Hungarian rule after 1328,
became independent in 1353 and had a short period of glory. Croatia, on the
coast, and Slavonia were both under Hungarian rule. The Latin-speaking
Wallachians and Moldavians, inhabiting modern Romania, were first
mentioned at the beginning of this century. Although they later claimed to
be descendants of Roman colonists of the 2nd century, this is improbable.

Almost certainly the Vlachs came from the western Balkans and only
migrated into Romania as the nomads abandoned it in the late 13th and
early 14th centuries. Wallachia was under Hungarian suzerainty until 1369,
then independent until 1389 when it became an Ottoman tributary.
Moldavia became independent in 1365 but fell under Lithuanian control in
1399. Bulgaria, under John Alexander, had its last great age. (Ref. 8, 137)

The expansion of the Ottomans during the reigns of- Orklan and Murad I
(1316-1389) was actually due to the action of semi-independent Turkish

marcher lords, but with the a ascension of Bayezid I in 1389, the conquest
speeded up, with the absorption of Bulgaria and the reduction of Serbia to
vassal status. Some of the Serbian Christians even helped the Turks in their
conquest and more of ten than not Greek, Serb and Bulgarian peasants
welcomed the conquerors as liberators from the oppression of Christian,
rural aristocrats. The final test of strength between the heirs of the Serbian
Nemanjic family leadership and the Ottomans came at Kosovo Polje in
1389, with the former meeting complete defeat. One of the effects of the
Ottoman expansion was the conversion to the Moslem faith of bright young
Christian boys who were taken to Moslem schools and their family
memories purged, to the end that they were forged into a corps of fearless
and devoted followers of the Turkish regime. Some were used as pages and
administrative aides while others were put in regiments of the guards,
forming the famous Janissaries, pledged to fight the enemies of the sultan
and Allah. (Ref. 8, 139, 131)

ITALY

Italy remained a conglomeration of contending city-states. The general
economy was poor at the beginning of the century, with the Black Death
killing 60,000 in Florence and 100,000 in Venice, great famines from 1315
to 1317, a decrease in manufacturing and trade and banking failures,
particularly that of the Peruzzi and the Bardi houses in Florence. Naples
was subject to France, under the House of Anjou and the rising Spanish
power, Aragon, seized Sardinia in 1313, while Genoa took Corsica. Venice
continued as a great power but had a serious uprising against its oligarchy
in 1310. This "Tiepolo's Rebellion" was crushed, but it led to the permanent
creation of an emergency committee called the "Council of Ten". Venice
and Genoa kept up their battle on the seas throughout the century, with
Venice the ultimate winner. (Ref. 49, 220, 279)

It was in this century that mercenary armies became standard in Italy.
Armed adventurers, often from north of the Alps, got together under various
leaders and either blackmailed local authorities or plundered the
countryside. One band of 10,000 armed men and twice as many camp
followers fought its way across central Italy, acting in effect, as a migratory

city. For protection against such mobs, citizens of the cities taxed
themselves to hire mercenary soldiers and the latter reimbursed the citizens,
in a sense, as they spent their pay in the community. Thus was armed
violence commercialized in Italy. (Ref. 279)

Overall, Italy did not stay "down" for long. In spite of the turmoil
mentioned above, Italians were the primary managers of the commercial
economy of Europe, with trade centers in Venice, Genoa, Florence, Sienna
and Milan. This involved wholesale buying and selling, organizing projects
in backwoods regions and extending credit. So extensive was their
European financial dealings that the bankruptcy of the English King
Edward III in 1339 triggered a general financial crisis in Italy. (Ref. 279)
The Rinascita, or rebirth of the Classic Spirit, began in 1378 in Florence,
financed by the money of the Medici family. This was the beginning of the
humanist movement of emphasis on philosophy rather than religion, as the
educated Florentines ignored some of the dogmas of the church and devoted
themselves to the enjoyment of beauty in women, man and art. This state of
bliss was marred some in 1345 when the industrial workers attempted to
overthrow the ruling business oligarchy. There was much business in
Florence as merchants there handled between 5,000 and 10,000 tons of
Sicilian grain every year. (Ref. 260) Additional Notes

Although the European slave trade had almost died out, the decrease in
population occasioned by the Black Death and famine resulted in Florence
authorizing the import of slaves, providing they were infidels. By the end of
the century almost every household had at least one, usually female, of
Circassian, Tartar, Greek or Russian origin. All of this led the way for the
Renaissance, which consumed all Italy in the next century. Toynbee (Ref.
220) says that this was a period of withdrawal and isolation from the rest of
Europe, with new economic, political and cultural ideas developing. It was
the age of Petrarch and Boccaccio and Dante, all of Florence. By the end of
the century, in addition to Florence, there were Italian states of Venice, the
Papal States, Naples and perhaps the most powerful of all - Milan, under
Visconti lords. (Ref. 49, 220, 213, 170)

CENTRAL EUROPE

GERMANY

The Hanseatic League, originally established primarily by traders of the
Netherlands and Flanders, now included some 52 towns, most of them
German, including Bremen, Cologne, Danzig, Dortmund, Hamburg and
Hanover. (Ref. 222) At this time Germany was essentially a federation of
provinces, each ruled by secular or ecclesiastical princes acknowledging a
limited fealty to the head of the Holy Roman Empire. Ludwig Wittelsbach
of Bavaria made himself emperor and then battled with pope John XXII
over the imperial succession and finally crowned his own pope. (Ref . 8).
William of Occam, a Franciscan theologian and philosopher, took refuge
with this Emperor Ludwig IV, after he had been excommunicated in
England. He was important as a forerunner of Martin Luther, in attacking
papal claims to temporal authority and appealing to the authority of the
Bible. Bavaria was briefly united under the Wittelsbach emperor but at his
death the imperial crown went to Charles IV of Bohemia. In this century,
the Brandenburg rulers became members of the Electoral College which
chose the German king and emperor, but Wittelbachs, Habsburgs and
Luxembourgs all contested for the crown while papal intervention
contributed to monarchial weakness. (Ref. 8) Additional Notes

Although it was a period of degeneration in some areas of Germany, there
were also new ideas appearing that foreshadowed a more modern state. One
of these was a growing territorialism, with the formation of Standestaaten,
or states based on estates, without feudal arrangement and with the gradual
establishment of non-noble, civil service, pointing the way toward more
centralized communities. The second concept was that of bourgeoisie. In
1300 only 811 towns north of the Alps had a flourishing trade but by 1450
there were 3,000 such towns. Leagues of these were formed for mutual
protection and the acme of this was the Hanseatic League, which reached its
high point in this century. Salted herring made the merchants of this Hanse
wealthy. Although the fundamental basis was economic, the League used
war, if necessary to protect its interests. The merchant families formed a
new Class of patricians and guilds appeared for artisans and workmen. The
still famous Loewenbrau brewery was started in Munich in 1383. Blast
furnaces, which allowed iron to be cast, resulted in the transformation of
European iron technology, a feature which, in turn, revolutionized warfare
by decreasing the useful ness of castles and the value of chivalry. (Ref. 213)

A final factor of importance in this era was the Teutonic Knight. Even by
1300 Germans had pushed beyond the Elbe, seizing the Baltic littoral and
settling in Poland and Hungary. (Ref. 177, 184, 222)

Cruel persecution of Jews reached a peak, with wholesale murders in
Swabia, Bavaria and the Rhine as well as in Switzerland and Austria.
Famine, followed commonly by the Black Death, reached almost every
German village. Many felt that the epidemic was a judgment of God and
they joined a fanatic religious movement, the "Flagellants", who turned on
the Jews in many areas, accusing them of causing the plague by poisoning
of the wells. Jewish persecution may have accelerated the eastward shift of
the Jewish population in Europe and helped to populate Poland with Jewish
merchants. Economically, wage and price patterns were disrupted, class
conflicts were exacerbated and an increased personal mysticism appeared
within the Christian religion. (260,140).

AUSTRIA

Although subject to the Holy Roman Emperor, the Habsburgs controlled the
duchy of Austria and were gradually extending their holdings. By the time
of Rudolf TV (1356-65), the family had consolidated their position and
Austria was a major power. The University of Vienna was founded in 1365
(Ref. 8)

HUNGARY

Hungary began the century with close to 1,000,000 people, consisting in a
minority of Magyars ruling a majority of Slavs. The Arpad Dynasty became
extinct in 1301, and Charles Robert of Anjou was brought in to rule and
with French and Italian ideas and wines, Hungary became a western state.
Industrial immigrants began to arrive from Germany, Flanders and Italy. It
was a century of some glory and essentially peace for Hungary and adjacent
states. One-third of all the gold production in the world, in the amount of
3,000 pounds each year, came from Hungary. Charles Robert set up a
systematic fiscal policy with that gold as a base. Charles’ son, Louis,

although still an Angevin, became one of the greatest kings and was called
"the Great", chiefly because of territory gained and his added assumption of
the Polish throne in 1370. Some estimates give up to 3,000,000 people in
Hungary by that time. The government was typical of European feudalism
with nobles supplying military support for the monarch. Allied with Genoa,
Louis had a long struggle with Venice which ended in the Peace of 1381 in
which Venice ceded Dalmatia and paid tribute. Serbia, Wallachia and
Moldavia all recognized the suzerainty of Louis and he even had a victory
over the Turks in northern Bulgaria in 1366. At Louis' death his daughter
Maria became queen and married Sigismund of Luxemburgs who became
guardian of the kingdom. This situation was soon challenged by Charles of
Durazzo and Naples, who had a large following in southern Hungary and
Croatia and he became king in 1385 only to be assassinated about a year
later. This resulted in a Croatian revolt and it was 1387 before Sigismund
regained control and this time assumed the throne, himself. He was absent
from the country most of the time, however, and there was a marked decline
in royal power. In 1396 there was a disastrous loss in battle with the Turks,
Dalmatia was taken again by Venice and there were Hussite invasions from
Bohemia as a result of Sigismund's attempt to gain the Bohemian throne.
(Ref. 119, 126)

CZECHOSLOVAKIA

Like Austria, Bohemia was a part of the German Holy Roman Empire, but
with its own king. After the death of Wenceslas ITI (1306), the ancient
Przemyslid line ended and a foreigner, John of Luxemburg, son of Emperor
Henry VIII, was brought in to form a new dynasty, making Bohemia a part
of the West. Limited in power by written law and subject to actions of a
national diet, he actually showed little concern for Bohemian affairs. In
spite of this Bohemia became a power in international politics. John
supported the Teutonic Knights against Lithuania and for a time ruled
western Lombardy, as well as the Tyrol. He died in the battle of Crecy,
fighting on the side of the French. His son became King Charles I and soon
Emperor Charles IV of the Holy Roman Empire. He was the greatest of the
Bohemian kings, maintaining peace with the Germans, organizing good
government, rebuilding and beautifying Prague and founding the University

of Prague as the first university in central Europe. By the Golden Bull,
initiated in the empire in 1356 transforming it from a monarchy into an
aristocratic federation with seven electors to vote on the emperor and other
matters, the King of Bohemia was given first place among those electors.
Charles was a bright young man in every way except as a military leader
and was the last of the great medieval kings. His one black mark was his
subsidizing of the massacre of Jews and giving of their property to his
supporters. His son and successor, Wenceslas IV, was a useless alcoholic
and the remainder of the century was one of political chaos and
degeneration. At the end of the century John Huss was pushing for the use
of the vernacular in church liturgy and a religious movement known as
Hussites began to form. Slavic nationalism rose in full force and added
another disconcerting element.

(Ref. 8, 119)

SWITZERLAND

The Swiss were the best soldiers in Europe and were frequently hired out as
mercenaries and they repulsed all attempts of the Austrian dukes to enforce
feudal rights. In 1315, after defeating the Habsburg dukes by rolling rocks
down the hills on to the knights, at the battle of Morgarten, three cantons
made the further step of forming the Swiss Confederacy, on their way to
establishing the most stable and sensible democracy in history. Soon the
original three cantons had been joined by five others. The Confederacy,
however, remained a part of the Holy Roman Empire, although the southern
communes emancipated themselves from the domination of the House of
Habsurg by defeating Leopold II of Swabia, in 1388. Blamed for spreading
the Black Death, Jews were persecuted at Lake Geneva and Basel. (Ref.
222)

WESTERN EUROPE

Famines, the Black Death (1346-53) and social and economic strife
reordered the manorial system throughout western Europe, with the

previous servile tenant becoming either a free-holder or wage worker.
Laborers organized and revolts erupted. (Ref. 8) After 1350, for a hundred
years there was a sharp drop in population and concomitantly a rise in the
standard of living for the survivors of the epidemics and famines, as they
inherited property and had more land for use and could concentrate on only
the good, productive land. (Ref. 260)

SPAIN

Racially and geographically Spain was lacking in unity. Its population was
a mixture of many stocks - Iberian, Celtic, Carthaginian and Roman,
Teutonic and Arabic, Moorish and Jewish - and its mountains had prevented
it from acquiring homogeneity.

In the Christian areas they had only religion in common. The one saving
grace of 14th century Spain was wool, the chief source of royal revenue. By
1400 this country was exporting wool all over Europe and especially to
Tuscany, while English exports there had dropped. (Ref. 213, 222)

Bands of mercenaries employed by every side took place in dynastic wars
over most of the country. Although the successors of Alfonso X were not
very capable, Alfonso XI (1340) did defeat an attack of Spanish and
Moroccon Moslems and ended the African menace. This battle of Rio
Salado (1340) saw perhaps the first use of cannon in Europe. (Ref. 281)
Throughout the Hundred Years War, Castile supported France but tried to
avoid actual hostility with England. Pedro the Cruel came to power in mid-
century and, helped by the Franciscan monks, promoted a terrible
persecution of Jews. Some of the latter converted to Christianity while
others fled or were killed. Otherwise Pedro's reign was little more than a
dynastic struggle with his half-brother, Enrigue (Henry) Trastamara.

The French, outraged by Pedro's treatment of his French wife, sent Du
Guesclin to Spain to support Enrigue, while the English supported Pedro
until they, too, became estranged by the kings' viscous character. Ultimately
Enrigue defeated and killed Pedro and subsequently reigned as Enrigue IT
Trastamara. In Spanish history this was the "Trastamara usurpation" of

1369. Peace was made with both Aragon and Portugal by 1374. (Ref. 222)
Enrigue's son, John I, and grandson, Enrigue II followed him on the throne
before the end of the century.

In Aragon territories, James II held Sardinia and Corsica, while giving
Sicily to his brother Frederick. There was continued turmoil among the
nobility, however, with Alfonso IV ruling from 1327 to 1336 and then
giving way to Pedro IV who ruled from 1336 to 1387. He was virtually a
prisoner of the nobility for much of that reign and was eventually succeeded
by a nephew, John I of Aragon. Pedro's daughter, Eleanor, married another
John, son of Enrigue of Castile, so that these two communities became
reconciled. Granada remained under Moslem rule, tolerant and prosperous.
The physician Ibn-a Khatib described the contagious aspect of the Black
Death, in contrast to the general concept of the times, which was that it was
due to divine vengeance.

PORTUGAL

The great king Diniz was succeeded in 1325 by his son, Afonso IV. The
latter had a troubled reign, including civil war with the opposition led by his
son, Pedro (Peter) I. Under Ferdinand I further war with Castile occurred as
Castile's Juan (John) claimed the throne because of his marriage to a
Portuguese princess,- Beatrix, but the Castilians were beaten at the battle of
Aljubarrota on August 14, 1385, which became Portuguese Independence
Day. Under the Avis Dynasty, with John I the Great, Portugal entered the
greatest period of its history. John married John Gaunt's daughter, Philippa,
thus making the subsequent Avis family part English. (Ref. 119, 222)

FRANCE

The States-General met for the first time in 1302. Everywhere the new
monarchies were finding a powerful aristocratic reaction and it was a
particularly bad century for France. In addition to the revolt of the nobles
there were labor-employer troubles and then England's attempt to conquer
France, which began the Hundred Years' War in 1331. This came close to

initial success with victories for England at Crecy in 1346 when Edward
III's 4,000 knights and 10,000 English and Welsh longbowmen defeated
Philip VI's 38,000 assorted heavily armored men and again at Poitiers in
1356, when the Black Prince of Wales took France's Jean II (John) prisoner.
(Ref. 8, 222) Cannon were first used at Calais, in 1347. (Ref. 260) Unrest in
Paris in that same year was led by Etienne Marcel and eventually led to
violence. French expansion eastward was checked by the expanding Duchy
of Burgundy. As can be noted on the accompanying small maps, by 1360
England controlled all of the southwestern portion of modern day France.
By 1380, however, Charles V had retaken most of that territory. The
devastation of the crops was responsible for more deaths in that war than
the battles themselves. When Genoa, reeling from a final defeat by Venice
in 1396, accepted French protection, the stage seemed set for a full-scale
French intervention in Italy, but this was not yet to be as Charles VI,
inheriting the throne, became insane and the French government was
paralyzed. (Ref. 8, 213)

France had other problems in this century. Four general famines occurred
and there was a crisis in north European salt production, partly because of
the Hundred Years' War and partly because of economic conditions. The
chief source of salt then became the beach pans of Bouigneuf Bay in
southern Brittany, but this was of poor quality. Other problems were
religious in nature. Early in the century Philip IV, wanting the Knights
Templars' property, forced Pope Clement to allow the Grand Inquisitor,
Guillaume of Paris, to prosecute the Templars as heretics. De Molay was
burned at the stake in this activity and thus became a martyr. Since the
Knights, originally an ascetic Catholic order, had over the years become
very wealthy and were serving as the bankers of civilization, their
prosecution could not help but interfere with the country 's economic as
well as religious activities. France expelled all Jews in 1394. (Ref. 49, 211,
260)

NOTE: Insert FRANCE IN MID-14TH CENTURY (1328/1360)

Credits can go to some Frenchmen of this century, however. Jean Buridan
wrote on theoretical physics and astronomy, anticipating Galiter, Descartes
and Newton. Henri de Mondeville and Guy de Chauliac were great French

surgeons and Nicole Oresme developed a system of co-ordinates and
employed graphs to show the growth of functions, preparing the way for
Copernicus. (Ref. 49, 125)

NETHERLANDS AND BELGIUM

The Dutch had succeeded in reopening the trade route around the Danish
peninsula and had somewhat overcome the dominance of the Germanic
Hanse in the Baltic trade. (Ref. 137) Growing realism and individualism in
the arts was the most striking feature in the Netherlands, whose culture was
strongly and proudly Germanic. (Ref. 177)

Farther south in Flanders[ footnote] as early as 1302 there was a general
uprising against French influence and the burgher oligarchy. In spite of this
and a great famine lasting from 1315 to 1317 which greatly affected
Flemish cities, Flanders enjoyed a great economic development and along
with Brabant had become the largest industrial complex in northern Europe,
chiefly exporting woolens. As labor-employer troubles developed, however,
a communistic type of organization appeared. As the English began to
dominate the commercial activities in Flanders, a political crisis developed
and the communes made the Count of Flanders, Louis of Nevers, prisoner
(1325). Philip marched in, massacred the burghers on the field of Cassel
and established French administration again. When England's Edward III
replied with an embargo on wool export from England in 1336 the weavers
of Ghent, under the wealthy James van Artevelde, became virtual masters
of the country and made a commercial treaty with England. When Edward
then declared himself King of France the Flemings recognized him as their
sovereign and made a political alliance with him, all of this becoming a part
of the start of the Hundred Years War. In 1369 the daughter of the Count of
Flanders married the Duke of Burgundy with a two-fold result. First, there
occurred a concentration of Flemish, French and Burgundian artists in the
Burgundian cities and secondly after 1384 control of Flanders passed to
Burgundy. (Ref. 8, 222, 119)

Flanders is an area which today makes up most of western Belgium but
includes also a portion of France. Most of the people speak a Germanic
tongue, Flemish, and are known as Flemings

BRITISH ISLES

In Great Britain, as a whole, the Black Death dropped the population from
3.7 million in 1348 to 2.2 million in 1377 and it dropped another 100,000 in
the next 50 years.

ENGLAND

The basic cause of the Hundred Years War between England and France
was the dynastic quarrel which started with the conquest of England by
William of Normandy in the 11th century and which created a state lying on
AOth sides of the channel. In this 14th century the English kings still held
the Duchy of Guienne in southwest France and they resented paying
homage to French kings. Edward I had spent most of his life fighting the
Scots and finally was defeated by them, while Edward II was a weak ruler
who was finally forced to abdicate in favor of his fifteen year old son,
Edward III, while the latter's mother and paramour, Roger Mortimer,
actually ruled the nation. Meanwhile Edward II had died in a dungeon,
supposedly by means of a red hot poker inserted through a pipe into his
rectum, so that there were no external signs of violence. Coming of age,
Edward III became upset over the way the French were treating the Duchy
of Guienne as well as their activities in the Lowlands and he declared
himself the King of France and sent armies through the Low Countries to
France, to prove his claim. This king was the most spectacular of the
Plantagenets, a conqueror, brave, but extravagant, ostentatious and shallow.
His son, another Edward, was the famous Black Prince of warrior fame,
who first won and then lost a great part of France for England during the
Hundred Years War. Rather than being acclaimed a hero, he seemed to
antagonize the people. He never reigned as king because he died before his
father and it was his son, Richard II, who became a child king with John of
Gaunt, his uncle, serving as regent. (Ref. 40, 170) Additional Notes

In spite of the intermittent warfare[footnote], business had a great
emergence, with new tycoons developing in the wool industry. After 1350
so much of the locally grown wool was made into cloth in England that the
weavers of Flanders and Italy had to get and use poorer wool from Spain
and Ireland. This was also a period of semi-renaissance, with a more

general desire for education and a sudden surge of interest in university
training. Oxford enlarged and new colleges were started, including Exeter,
Oriel and Queens. Balliol had been built in the previous century. (Ref. 49,
137)

Rather than a continuous affair, the Hundred Years War was actually a
series of intermittent wars

But England also had its troubles in this century. Early on, heavy rains
wrecked harvests and destroyed the vineyards. Then the Black Death
(bubonic plague) rolled into England in 1347 and returned again in 1361
and 1368, killing from 1/4 to 112 of the entire population. Because of the
decimation of the laboring class, labor trouble subsequently developed.
Some ref used to work because of low wages and became bandits. One
great revolt of the workers, the Wat Tyler rebellion, was finally put down in
1381 by young King Richard I, after some concessions were made. In 1399
Henry Bolingbroke of Lancaster, son of John of Gaunt, beat Richard in
battle, imprisoned him and took over the realm as Henry IV, ending the
Plantagenet Dynasty. It should be mentioned that war with the Scots was
another ever present threat to England throughout this century and
frequently a reality. (Ref. 49, 8, 222)

Of some interest is the further development of the English language at this
time. In 1362 Edward III ruled that English, rather than French, should be
used for public trials and that was the first decisive defeat for the French
language on the islands. Then English replaced Norman French in the
schools and became the accepted language of the nation. Richard Rolle,
who died of the plague in 1349, was the father of English prose, as he
amalgamated Old English, Norman, French and Latin in a written language
that had previously only been spoken. Geoffrey Chaucer lived and wrote in
this type of English between 1340 and 1400. John Wycliff was partly
responsible for the first complete, vernacular English Bible and this at a
time when the established church felt that Bible reading by the masses was
heresy. The poor priests who followed Wycliff (also Wyclif and Wiclif)
were called Lollards and soon it was said that every fourth man in England
was a Lollard, in that they adhered to his doctrines, which emphasized the
purely spiritual function of the church, with direct access of the individual
to God. Advocating a property-less church, Wycliff was opposed to the

auricular confession and was in favor of the reduction of the importance of
the sacraments. (Ref. 49, 229)

SCOTLAND

As the century opened Scotland remained without a king and suffered
continual internal strife and external warfare with England. In early 1306,
after a bloody confrontation with John Comyn the Red, Robert Bruce, a
descendant of de Brus, was crowned King of Scotland. Immediately King
Edward I of England started mobilization of forces to send north against
him. Not ready for war, Robert I promptly disappeared into the western
islands where, over the next many months, he gathered bands of Islemen,
Irish and Gaels to initiate guerrilla warfare. Edward died in 1307 but the
battles went on, with Robert making surprisingly successful raids on
English strongholds, taking advantage of the weakness of Edward IT. A
great battle was finally fought at Bannock-burn, just south of Stirling, in
1314, with Robert I and 30,000 Scots defeating 100,000 English. An
independent Scottish kingdom resulted with Robert I Bruce the
unchallenged monarch. Bruce's daughter, Margaret, married Walter "the
steward" and became the founder of the house of Stuart. (Ref. 8, 38, 91,
119)

Upon Robert's death, possibly from leprosy, his son David II succeeded him
in 1329, nominally ruling for 42 years, although his regents had to fight
constantly against usurpers and attacks from England. Edward III gave the
Scots one of their worst defeats at Halidon Hill, forcing the boy king David
Bruce to be taken to France for protection, while Edward Balliol (also
Baliol), with English support, took over the throne. When Edward III turned
to fight France, David II returned to his own country and Balliol was
thrown out. In 1346, however, at the battle of Neville's Cross, David was
captured by the English and spent 11 years in the Tower of London. He was
finally released after an agreement wherein Scotland was to pay 100,000
marks in 10 yearly installments. Only 1/4 of this was actually ever paid.
During these same years, Scotland suffered with England from the terrible
scourge of the Black Death, chiefly of the pneumonic form. (Ref. 91, 222,
119)

The Steward (Stuart) line was established on the Scottish throne in 1371 by
Robert II Steward, nephew of David 11 and descendant of Walter Fitz-Alan
(high steward of Scotland in 1136) and with France as an ally his nobles
fought England again, all as part of the Hundred Years War. Robert II
succeeded to the throne in 1390. There was great poverty in Scotland,
except among those nobles who had the military power and dominated the
Parliament and the King. The villages had a measure of self-government
within the framework of feudalism and monarchy. Industry was primitive,
commerce precarious and the cities small and few. All Scotland had about
600,000 people. (Ref. 91, 119)

IRELAND

Edward Bruce, brother of Robert Bruce of Scotland, landed in Ireland in
1316 and with the support of some native leaders, had himself crowned
king, although he lasted only two years. By 1350 the Normans controlled
most of Ireland, although during this and the next century they adopted Irish
customs. The Irish Parliament, made up almost entirely of English
Normans, passed in 1366 the infamous Statute of Kilkenny, which for- bade
inter-marriage between English and Irish "to prevent Gaelicization" This
government of Ireland, emasculated by the English, soon became very
corrupt. That statute, followed by the Black Death epidemic of 1348 and
1349 started the-decline of English influence in Ireland, as the viceroys and
governors were unable to maintain order. (Ref. 40, 119)

WALES

Remained restlessly under English rule.

SCANDINAVIA

Fishing replaced agriculture as the chief economic activity of both
Scandinavia proper and Iceland. Near the end of the century, Margaret ruled
as queen and regent over all three of the true Teutonic Scandinavian

countries - Norway, Sweden and Denmark - in a wonderful reign lasting
into the next century.

NORWAY

Magnus II, who was also King of Sweden, ruled Norway as king from 1319
until he turned the Norwegian crown over to his son Haakon VI in 1343.
Margaret, daughter of Denmark's Valdemar IV, was married at ten years of
age to King Haakon VI and ten years later she had a son, Olaf, who became
king of Denmark when Valdemar died and then king of Norway when
Haakon died. When Olaf expired in 1387, Margaret was elected as Queen,
thus introducing the system of election already in practice in Denmark and
Sweden.

SWEDEN

Magnus II became the Swedish king in 1319 at the age of three years, with
his mother as regent and effective ruler. Through his mother Magnus also
succeeded to the Norwegian crown and during a troubled period in
Denmark actually gained Scania, Halland, and Bleking temporarily for
Sweden. Even after he assumed the reign for himself, there was a definite
weakening of the royal power and a rise of the aristocracy. The first meeting
of the Riksdag, which included nobles and burghers, was in 1359. By 1363
Magnus was deposed and succeeded by Albert of Mecklenburg, who was
always a tool of the nobility. They eventually dethroned him in 1388,
calling in Margaret, already Queen of Norway and regent of Denmark, thus
uniting all three countries. Officially she formed the Union of Kalmar in
1387 under the name of her grand-nephew and adopted son, Eric of
Pomerania, but she retained the effective power. Additional Notes

DENMARK

The successful reign of Eric Menved ended in 1320 by capitulation and
Christopher II was elected, with limitations laid down by the nobility and
clergy. In 1340 Christopher was driven from the throne by Gerhard, Count
of Holstein. This was indicative of the dominance of the German Hansa
towns in Danish politics at that time. From 1332 to 1340 Denmark was in a
state of anarchy, with no king and actually ruled by German Counts from
adjacent territories. The Scanian provinces across the sound placed
themselves under the Swedish king, Magnus Smek, as a separate province.
But then came Valdemar IV, the youngest son of Christopher, to take the
throne as one of the greatest Danish kings. The Church was subordinated to
the royal power and the nobles and towns were made to perform their
military obligations as Valdemar reconquered the territories lost by his
father, in wars with Sweden, Holstein and Schleswig. In 1361 he even took
on the Hansa. Copenhagen was sacked but the Danes defeated the Hansa
fleets in 1362 at Helsingborg.

Valdemar had been raised at the Imperial German court as a European man
of fashion; his wife was a Schlesvig princess. Although not liked much by
the Danes, he ruled efficiently. During his reign he sold Estonia to German
nobles, then conquered the Goths of Gotland, an island in the Baltic which
was actually a part of Sweden although controlled by the Hanseatic League.
The second war with the Hansa occurred from 1368 to 1370 and this time
the League was supported by Sweden, Norway, Holstein, Mecklenburg and
even by some of the Danish nobles. Badly defeated, Valdemar accepted the
Peace of Stralsund which again made the Hansa supreme in the Baltic.
Valdemar's grandson, Olaf, ruled from 1376, under the regency of his
mother, Margaret, until his death in 1387 when Margaret became queen,
ruling also in Norway and Sweden. (See map, page 726)

FINLAND

After 30 years of being the battle field for war between Sweden and Russia,
in 1323 a boundary treaty was drawn up and solemnized and Finland
became a true province of Sweden, remaining so for the next 500 years.

EASTERN EUROPE

SOUTHERN BALTIC AREA

Northern Estonia was sold by Denmark to German nobles of the Teutonic
Knights, who were already pretty well distributed throughout that area.
About two centuries of eastward migration of Germans, with the founding
of such cities as Wismar, Rostock, Stralsund, Greifswald, Cammin and
Kolberg had resulted in the formation of the Hanseatic League in 1358. The
bulk of the peasantry in the Baltic States retained their Finno-Ugrian
character and there was not any actual military conquest except in Prussia.
(Ref. 8) In this and the next century the northern seas swarmed with herring
and the Hanseatic League (with some strong competition from the Dutch)
tended to dominate the commerce. Herring has to be salted within 24 hours
of the catch and so this was of ten done at sea with salt imported from the
south. The same chemical allowed cabbage to be preserved through the
winter and the Baltic lands had a frontier boom, sending timber and grain to
the Low Countries. As in most of Europe, however, the Black Death came
on the scene in 1350. (Ref. 211, 137, 279)

Early in the century Poland withdrew from a previous short-term Bohemian
association and in spite of pressure by the German Knights on the west and
north and by Lithuania on the east, Vladislav united Poland into a coherent
kingdom with a capital at Cracow. Casimir III, called the Great, continued
as a fine administrator, indulging in some territorial exchanges and
founding the University of Cracow. In both this and the next century,
Poland's internal strife was perpetually between kings attempting
unification and nobles trying to establish more of an oligarchy type of
government. Externally Poland pushed alternately against the Teutonic
Knights northward, trying to get to the Baltic, and southeast toward the
Black Sea. As a result of a dynastic agreement in 1370, Louis of Hungary
became the Polish king and reigned until his death about 1382. The Poles
then accepted Louis' younger daughter, Jadwiga, and married her to Jagiello
of Lithuania, at which time they separated from Hungary. Beginning in this
century the Poles used their rivers for transportation of great rafts carrying
wood to the Baltic Sea. Like other European medieval cities, Prague was a

walled, self-contained unit, but occasionally it was necessary to move the
walls to allow for growth. (Ref. 260)

NOTE: Insert Map 74. Lithuania and Poland 13th-14th Centuries

Lithuania was the largest territorial state of 14th century Europe and
Gedymin (1316- 1341) and Olgierd (1345-1377) of the Gedimimas family
were the real founders of that nation. Blocked by the Germans on the Baltic,
they took advantage of the weakness of the Russian principalities to extend
control to the east and south by acquiring Polotsk, Minsk and the middle
Dnieper region, with Vilno as the capital of the state. Several times Olgierd
advanced to the very outskirts of Moscow and he extended his domains to
the Black Sea, where he defeated the resident Tatars, re-establishing an
extensive realm that had been occupied in prehistoric times by the Baltic
Galindas. The Lithuanians were people that had originated in the upper
Dnieper basin and mixed with Lappons, who had been pushed south by the
Baltic Finns. At the end of the century Lithuania was ruled by Jagiello, a
pagan. When he married the Polish princess Jadwiga, as noted above, she
converted him to Christianity and he then took the name Valdislav II. This
marriage united Poland and Lithuania into a giant Slavic kingdom in 1385.
The Polish-Lithuanian link was always loose, however, for several reasons
not the least of which was that Poland was Catholic and Lithuania was
chiefly Orthodox. In addition, they tended to pull in opposite directions,
with the Poles chiefly concerned with the inroad of the Germans while the
Lithuanians expanded along the Black Sea, hoping to exploit the decline of
the Golden Horde. The latter were still tough enough, nevertheless, to
defeat the Lithuanians in 1399 and close off their Black Sea outlet. (Ref. 49,
119, 61, 137) (See map, page 726, also)

RUSSIA (See map in RUSSIA section in 19th century)

Russia did not exist as a nation at this time. The western-most territory was
dependent to Lithuania; the north had a variety of independent city-states,
including from north to south the Principates of Novgorod, Moscow and
Ryazan. The east, including all the territory north of the Caspian, some east
of the Caspian, all north of the Black Sea in a diagonal line running

northeast - all this was the Khanate of the Golden Horde with its Mongol-
Turk marauder occupants. It was noted in the last chapter that in all
probability the plague was brought to the Euro-Asian steppes from the
southeast of Asia, then by the Mongols to the Crimea, from whence it
spread to all of Europe. In 1347 the city of Caffa (now Feodosiya) was
under siege by the Tartars when they suddenly began dying off with plague.
The living Mongols catapulted their dead companions into the city and as
the Christian defenders started home, nearly all died at sea. It was the
survivors that started the epidemic in Italy that soon spread to the entire
continent. (Ref. 8, 137, 125)

Novgorod was an important city of the Hanseatic League with a population
in this century of about 400,000, a high rate of literacy and a thriving
economy. In the Ukraine the old Scythian population, mixed with Slav and
some Mongol blood, reverted to a nomadic life and became the Christian
Cossacks, forming somewhat of a buffer against the Tartars. The general
population shift, however, was northward. In 1318 the Yarlik (charter)
given by the Golden Horde to a north Russian subaltern, passed on to
Prince Yuri of Moscow and then to Ivan of Moscow, who also brought the
Church Metropolitan to that city. The Russians of the era were very pious,
monasteries were numerous and the Patriarch Alexis was virtually the ruler
of the Russian people from 1354 to 1370 as the church was the life and
culture of all. In mid-century Ivan II of Moscow refused to pay tax to the
Mongols and the latter retaliated by raiding and massacring some 24,000
people and burning the city of Moscow. After this, however, the Mongol
hold on Russia gradually weakened and in the great battle of Kulikovo,
Dmitri Donskoi (meaning "of the Don"), then ruler of Moscovy, defeated
the Tartar army in 1380 for the first time. Lithuanian armies, which were
supposed to help the Mongols, did not arrive on time and probably related
to this defeat is the fact that in the same year the Golden Horde was
conquered by the White Horde from the east, which then migrated into its
territories, although in the West all were still known by the former name.
The Mongol-Turks were still not completely destroyed, however, and lived
to attack Moscow again. (Ref. 131, 119)

Note:The Florentine bankers, Bardi and Peruzzi, had financed England's
Edward III at the start of the 100 years war and when the king defaulted on
those loans, Florence experienced the most serious financial crash in its
history. All Europe had a general recession, which was followed by the
Black Death. At the end of the century Jewish bankers, long kept at arms
length, made their entry into Florence and settled there as money lenders in
the next century In Florence secular education was organized, with up to
10,000 children (out of a total population of 100,000) attending school.
Over 1,000 of those went on to high school, training specially for merchant
apprentices. A boy stayed there until age 15, studying arithmetic and
accounting. The merchants were an educated group. (Ref. 292)

Note:In Nuremberg, power was in the hands of only 43 patrician families,
by law. This meant 150 to 200 ruling people out of 20,000 in the town and
another 20,000 in the district. (Ref. 292)

Note:The wars of Edward II against Scotland were financed by
Frescobaldi of Florence. (Ref. 292)

Note:Slavery was abolished in Sweden in 1335. (Ref. 301)

Forward to Europe: A.D. 1401 to 1500
Choose Different Region

1. Intro to Era

2. Africa

3. America

4. Central and Northern Asia
5. The Far East

6. The Indian Subcontinent

7. The Near East
8. Pacific

Europe: A.D. 1401 to 1500

EUROPE
Back to Europe: A.D. 1301 to 1400

At 1401 there was no dominant state in Europe. Germany and Italy were
fragmented and the eastern empires of Casimir IV of Poland and Corvinus
of Hungary developed late in the century and even then were ephemeral.
The Iberian Peninsula had civil war and France had the Burgundians and
Armagnacs feuding. Prolonged climate deterioration began about 1450,
starting the "Little Ice Age", which lasted up to the first of the 19th century.
(Ref. 8, 224) In spite of all this, after about 1450 Europe began to recover
from the prolonged disasters and deficiencies of the previous 100 years.
(Ref. 292)

Slavery had almost ceased in Europe until Portugal revived the custom in
the latter half of the century, with the blacks from Africa. (Ref. 213)
Movable type printing gradually came into use so that by 1500 some 236
towns in Europe had their own print shops (11). As Braudel (Ref. 260)
States, the printing press expanded and invigorated everything. For centuries
there had been two different European navies - the Mediterranean and the
northern - but with increased trade and intermingling, the clinker
construction and centerline rudder of the northern ships began to appear in
the Mediterranean, while the southern lanteen rig went north and Europe
began to emerge more as a single civilization. Vehicles with a moveable
front axle, first used in gun carriages, were only employed after about 1470.
As populations increased and artillery made their old walls useless, 15th
century towns began to face serious problems. New, wide ramparts filled
with earth (and thus hardly movable) had to be constructed and then large
open spaces in front of these fortifications were necessary, eliminating
gardens and trees. (Ref. 260)

Methods of exchange of goods had changed considerably by this century.
Essentially only towns (or very large villages) now had markets. The
westem town controlled everything and the market, held usually once or
twice a week, was one of its chief mechanisms. The surrounding

countryside needed time to produce and collect goods and then divert some
individuals, usually women, to sell the produce. On the seas, ships had
increased enormously in size and were no longer individually owned, as
shares were sold. The money market moved towards Holland and later
London. (Ref. 292)

SOUTHERN EUROPE

EASTERN MEDITERRANEAN ISLANDS

Venice continued her domination of most of the Mediterranean and added
the island of Cyprus to her possessions in this century. (Ref. 38) The
exception was Rhodes, which remained under control of the Knights
Hospitallers.

GREECE

Early in the century Greece was divided between Ottomans, Venice, some
Latin States and a small area still belonging to Byzantium. By late century
all had been pushed out by the Ottoman Turks except for a few coastal
islands which were still controlled by Venice. In the next century or two
many Greek men actually functioned as Ottoman generals and officials.
(Ref. 137)

UPPER BALKANS

Early on the bulk of the Balkans were under Turkish domination with the
exceptions of Romania, which was a part of Hungary, and the Principality
of Moldavia. Albania was taken by the Ottomans in 1430 and by 1436 the
entire peninsula was Turkish. Their attempted invasion of Hungary began in
1439. Merchant Sicilians (Ragusans) were the chief westerners to penetrate
this Balkan Turkish territory. (Ref. 292)

ITALY (See maps on pages 704 and 711)

Italy remained as a group of states, including the Venetian Republic,
Florence, the Papal States, Genoa and Corsica, Sicily under Spanish Aragon
control, the Kingdom of Naples[footnote], and finally the German Empire
which was dominant in the very north. Of all these, Venice was probably
the most active, annexing much of the north Italian plain, giving her not
only agricultural land of her own, but a direct route to Germany and
guaranteeing her grain supply. (Ref. 292) Spices coming through Venice
were in ever greater demand because they could disguise rancidity in food,
reduce saltiness and give some character to otherwise insipid, dried edibles.
At one time pepper was as negotiable as silver for currency in Europe.
Venice imported 2,500 tons of pepper and ginger and almost as much again
of other spices. The Venetian control of this trade actually was a great
stimulus to the Portuguese to open up a Sea route to India and was a factor
in Spain's discovery of America. (Ref. 137, 211) This city was also the
incoming port for cotton in the form of yarn or bales, receiving loads twice
a year from Syria in 1,000 ton ships[footnote]. Venice was one of the first
city-states to have a completely mercenary land army, although they had
long used the same practice at sea. (Ref. 260, 279)

After 1435 Naples was also ruled by the Aragon king until November, 1500
when, in a secret treaty of Granada, Louis XII and Ferdinand divided this
kingdom between them. (Ref. 150)

Genoese catracks at this same period were already up to 1,500 tons. (Ref.
279)

In contrast, it was in Florence that the Golden Age of the Renaissance
started, in the last half of the century. Although plague continued to cause
extensive loss of life in Italy as a whole, with a continued fall of the
population of most Italian cities and with a decline in industrial and
agricultural production and woolen cloth, still Florence seemed to prosper.
The Florentine wool trade was a combination of activities in both town and
country. In fact Gino Barbieri recently commented[footnote]: "The Italian
renaissance is really all about wool" Controlled by the Medici family,
Florence bought Pisa, gaining direct access to the sea and it then invited
learned Greeks to the community (1439). This initiated a period of great art
and secondarily a considerable looseness in living and morals. The house of
a merchant in Tuscany about 1400 might have had 12 to 14 rooms with a

tile roof and glass windows, possibly a fireplace and wall hangings of
French serge or linen or carpet. Floor carpeting, however, was rare. The
dining room would have a long table with only one communal drinking
glass and no forks (except for serving) and few spoons. Guests would bring
their own knives. Benches were far more common than chairs. As
everything was made of wood, fires were common and catastrophic, as in
all of Europe.

As quoted by Braudel (Ref. 292), page 312

As a result of the transfer of the church from a religious organization to, for
all intents and purposes, a secular political power, the Italian middle and
upper classes became the most skeptical of all European peoples. Although
they paid lip service to the Catholic faith, their ideas and writings became
more humanistic. (Ref. 50, 213) The papal schisms of this century
undoubtedly had something to do with this shift of loyalties Water was
beginning to be a troublesome factor in a great city such as Rome and one
of the few accomplishments of Pope Martin V after the first papal schism
was to restore one of the demolished great Roman aqueducts. (Ref. 260)

NOTE: Insert Map 45. Renaissance Italy

Among the great artists of the era were Botticelli, Leonardo Da Vinci,
Raphael and Michelangelo. Leonardo was one of the greatest geniuses of all
time, a brilliant, multi- faceted, secretive man, born as an illegitimate son to
a notary, basically left-handed, but apparently somewhat ambidextrous and
who of ten wrote in mirror image. Known primarily as an artist and
sculptor, he was perhaps even more interested in science, including human
anatomy, comparative anatomy, botany, geology, physiology, mechanical
and hydraulic engineering, astronomy and military engineering. In addition
he was a philosopher, of ten writing in paraphrase in a method very
reminiscent of the New Testament and he even did some work in music,
mathematics and, of course, architecture. He has been called an
homosexual, but in the large, beautiful text of his work, called simply
"Leonardo da Vinci" (Ref. 121), the only reference by any of the
biographers to his personal, emotional life was the statement by Giorgio
Nicodemi: "There is no trace in his life of women, who may have smiled at
him or been his companions.”[footnote] Leonardo was a contemporary of

Columbus and Copernicus and helped to give deeper insight into the works
of Michelangelo and Raphael. At one time or another he lived and worked
in most of the city-states of Italy which were of ten at war with one another,
although he was basically a Florentine. (Ref. 50, 121)

From Reference 121, page 39

Science could make but moderate advances in this period and medicine
made more progress than most, but even the most advanced anatomists and
physicians of this age had barely reached, by 1500, the knowledge
possessed by Hippocrates, Galen and Soranus between 450 B.C. and A.D.
200. Syphilis became rampant in Italy in 1493 and 1494 and the argument
still goes on to whether or not this was brought from America. Celsus' old
book De Medicina was one of the first medical texts ever printed (Florence,
1478). In addition, in 1487 Mondino de Luzzi's treatise on dissection
techniques, called Anathomia was published at Padua and used as a
standard text through forty editions, until the time of Vesalius. The treatise
was actually written at the University of Bologna in 1316. (Ref. 50, 125)

Some new navigable canals and irrigation systems were built during this
period. The first Great War between the Turks and Venice (1463-1479)
developed over interference with trade and the Turkish threat to Albanian
and Greek coastal possessions of Venice. In 1480 Naples, too, was sacked
by Turks and at the end of the century almost of Italy, except Naples, came
under French control as Charles VIII invaded in 1494. For the first time,
artillery became a major element in European warfare in this campaign. It
became apparent then that the community financed, local mercenary armies
of the city-states of Italy could not stop intervention from outside the
peninsula. Florence and the Papal States yielded readily to the French and
even a fortress of the border of the Kingdom of Naples fell in 8 hours of
bombardment by the new French guns, as its wall were reduced to rubble.
(Ref. 279)

In addition to these military and political troubles, in 1498 the Portuguese
rounded the Cape of Good Hope, establishing a waterway to the East,
bypassing the Mediterranean and diverting world trade away from this
ancient trade route. But there was one redeeming feature that saved Italy at
that time. The rich of Europe forsake gold and silver fabrics for silk and

since Italy was one of the few silk manufacturing centers of the continent,
this brought a last wave of prosperity to the peninsula, to last about 100
years. Sicily was already growing sugar cane, but in spite of the
intervention of Genoese capitalism, the sugar works were money losing
ventures. (Ref. 292)

CENTRAL EUROPE

Gold and silver mines flourished again in central Europe from 1470 on for
about 70 years. Mining camps were worked by free men in the Alps, the
Carpathaians and the Erz Gebirge on the border between Czechoslovakia
and Germany. (Ref. 292)

GERMANY (See map in section on PRUSSIA, in 18th century)

15th century Germany will be described in some detail so that the reader
may understand the political and social groundwork on which the
Reformation was to burst in full bloom in the next century. The people were
the healthiest, strongest, cleanest and most vital and exuberant in Europe.
They were actually too vigorous and prosperous to tolerate any longer the
manacle of feudalism or the exactions of Rome. The German Church was
rich but much of its money continually drained into Rome and a
revolutionary spirit of hatred for the Church and the clergy had taken hold
of the masses in various parts of the country. In the last half of the century
all classes in Germany prospered and with the exception of knights and the
lower nobility, although there were sporadic agrarian revolts. The German
financiers became prominent, particularly at Augsburg, Bavaria and in
particular we must mention the Fuggers family. These and other south
German bankers had gained greatly from the mining boom in Germany and
Bohemia. (Ref. 279) This era of the Fuggers established a center of wealth
that Europe had not seen since the millionaires of Imperial Rome. The
Fuggers soon moved the center of their operations to Antwerp and this
closeness to northern Germany allowed that portion of the country to
become divorced from the Italian economy and thus strong enough to

protect Luther in the next century. Southern Germany, tied to the Italian
economy, remained Catholic. The relative abundance of gold in the last
years of the century in Europe paradoxically "launched" the silver mines of
Germany. As one of these precious metals becomes more commonplace, the
other becomes more valuable. (Ref. 260) (See map on page 711)

By 1460 a hundred small cities had won charters of practical freedom from
their lay or church superiors. Cologne, with 20,000 people, was the largest
town in Germany, functioning as a trade center at the intersection of two
Rhine waterways and important overland trade routes. There were still ten
times more rural than urban dwellers in the country, although there were
about 3,000 towns of all sizes, each acting as a relay point 5 to 8 hours apart
on trade routes. (Ref. 260) In each principality the three estates - nobles,
clergy and commons - met occasionally in a territorial diet that exercised
some restraint on the purse strings. Then there was an over-all Reichstag
and a Diet of Electors to choose a king, who was then made emperor by the
pope. Early in the century, Sigismund of Bohemia (and then also king of
Hungary) was the Holy Roman Emperor, but then the Habsburgs of Austria
came to power with Albert II in 1438 and after that all the emperors were
Habsburgs and thus from outside of Germany, itself . It was not great
wonder, then, that Frederick III, in league with the popes, aggravated
tension between the popes and the German people and further set the stage
for the Reformation. During his reign, the areas of Schleswig-Holstein,
Bohemia, Austria and Hungary detached themselves from the German
dominion.

With Gutenberg's European[footnote] invention of the movable type
printing press in 1454, there was a great increase in books for all the people.
This was one of the things which helped to terminate the Middle Ages.
There were 20 German translations of the Bible before Luther and a scholar,
Johannes Reuchlin, put the study of the Old Testament on a scientific basis,
so that it played a big part in the coming Reformation. Reuchlin was a
humanist; Albrecht Durer was an artist of the period; Johann Muller was a
peak figure in mathematics and astronomy, devoting an entire book to
trigonometry, describing Halley's comet, making longitude and latitude
calculations and establishing himself as a stimulating teacher. Sculptors
worked in bronze and wood. Lucas Cranach was another portrait painter of

the calibre of Durer and Nicholas (Krebs) of Cusa (1401-1464) was one of
the great philosophers of Germany. Some of his ideas live on in the
philosophical system of Leibniz. Regular postal service was established by
the end of this century. German universities had increased to 16.

It will be recalled that movable type was available in China as far back as
the 11th century, even though it was not extensively used until the 14th. See
pages 564 and 685

After 1400 the eastward political drive was carried on, not by the empire,
but by two quasi-independent states, Austria and Brandenburg-Prussia, or
more properly by the two dynasties - Habsburgs and Hohenzollerns. The
Emperor Sigismund gave the march of Brandenburg to Frederick of the
Hohenzollern[footnote] family in 1417. Through conquests, purchases and
marriages, this territory continued to grow. (Ref. 184) In Bavaria, Duke
Albert IV again united the area in the last half of the century and introduced
the law of primogeniture, thus allowing Bavaria to enter the Reformation
period strengthened and strongly Catholic. The Habsburg Maximilian I
(1493-1519) was the first and only Renaissance king of Germany. Through
his wife's inheritance (Mary was heiress to Charles the Bold of Burgundy)
he acquired the Netherlands. He was well educated, patronized the arts and
sciences and aspired to a writer. He was adored by the middle classes, even
though the princes were less than enthusiastic. Germany was still not a
state, but under Maximilian it might have been called a nation. Eventually,
however, both the emperor and the territorial lords began to hire mercenary
armies and thus initiated a military plague. After 1497, Jews were expelled
from many German cities.

The name comes from the ancestral castle atop Mt. Zollern in Swabia, but
the family descended from the Teutonic Knights, who superimposed their
Germanic origins over the original Prussian Balts, who eventually became
extinct as a separate people. (Ref. 131)

AUSTRIA

Upon reading the paragraphs above it is apparent that it is difficult to
separate the history of Austria from Germany at this period, when the
Habsburgs were also emperors of all Germany. When Frederick III was

crowned Holy Roman Emperor in 1452 he soon made Austria an
archduchy. In 1474 the Habsburgs acquired the whole of Vorarlberg (on the
border of Switzerland) and then in 1477 the Netherlands by marriage, as
noted in the paragraph above. The inhabitants of Austria are, of course,
basically Germanic, and the remarks about the German people above, can
be easily translated to the Austrian populace. The only really negative
feature of the century occurred in 1485, when King Matthias of Hungary
occupied Vienna and stayed there for 5 years, actually assimilating Lower
Austria and Syria into a temporary Hungarian Empire.

HUNGARY

Hungary, along with the Balkans and Poland, sent cattle on the hoof to
Germany and Venice. Sigismund (actually Bohemian) was King of Hungary
as the century opened and soon became Holy Roman Emperor. It was under
his reign that a peasant revolt broke out over tithe money in the
Transylvania region (now a part of Romania). This resulted in an institution
called "The Union of the Three Nations" under which the nobles of
Transylvania, along with the Saxons and the Szekels, formed a league for
mutual defense against all except the king. Sigismund was followed by a
young Polish king, Vladislav V, who was called Ulaszlo by the Hungarians.

At that time, Janos Hunyadi, son of a lesser noble of Vlach origin, who had
been rapidly promoted in the army, defeated the Turks in Transylvania in
1442 and then, with King Vladislav V, undertook a Balkan campaign where
eventually they were disastrously defeated and the king was killed. The heir
was yet a baby so his uncle, Emperor Frederick, left Hunyadi in charge of
Hungary, as regent. In 1456 the regent fought and defeated the Turks
beyond Belgrade and had no further trouble with them for many years. The
young king died soon after Hunyadi's death and there ensued a scramble for
the throne. Finally, the nobles elected Hunyadi's son, Matyas (Matthias or
Mathew). He was a true Renaissance prince, who fought 4 wars with the
German Emperor Frederick II, finally gaining Lower Austria and Styria for
his domains. This first Austro-Hungarian Empire was thus Hungarian.
When Matyas died with no heir, the Hungarians took Vladislas Jagiella,

another Bohemian king, as their own. Lower Austria was then given back to
the current emperor, Maximilian. (Ref. 124)

CZECHOSLOVAKIA

The phenomenon of earning wages by hiring out as a laborer was early seen
in the mines of Bohemia. The considerable investment required for
equipment for deep mines could be made only by merchants, who then paid
men to do the work. (Ref. 292) As a source of energy, horizontal water
wheels were still used in Bohemia at this time. (Ref. 260) We have seen in
the paragraphs immediately above that there was a close association at this
period, of Bohemia with Hungary.

As early as 1410 Germans and Czechs had clashed at the University of
Prague over the papal schism and the German teachers and students had left
and gone to Saxony, where they eventually founded the University of
Leipsig. Under the reign of Wenceslaus IV, John Huss, a priest of Prague,
began to preach the doctrines of Wycliff, challenging image worship,
auricular confession, many ornate rites, indulgences and the existence of
purgatory. The Church banished him and eventually burned him at the stake
as an heretic, along with his friend and supporter, Jerome. The news of
Huss' death caused the Bohemian Revolution of 1415 to 1436, in which the
people denounced the death and declared that they would fight to defend
the doctrines of Christ against the man-made decrees of the Church. They
formulated the "Four Articles of Prague", as follows:

(1) Mass should be given in wine as well as wafer. (2) Simony should be
punished. (3) The word of God should be preached rather than doctrines.
(4) There should be an end to the extensive wealth of the clergy.

The Bohemian Revolution actually became the Hussite Wars, which, in
turn, became socialistic in character. The Germans in Bohemia wanted to
remain faithful to the Roman Church and the Hussites made them their
victims, with battles, massacres and persecutions. All elements of the later
Luther Reformation appeared first in this Hussite Movement. Wenceslaus
IV died in 1419 and Bohemia had no king for 17 years, during which time

the Hussites were dominant. Eventually they began to argue among
themselves, however, and broke up into various factions. The more radical
wing formed the "Moravian Brethren" sect and in eastern Bohemia and
Moravia the Moravian Brotherhood Church was formed in 1457. By 1500
there were 100,000 members, renouncing the authority of the Roman
Church and dedicating themselves to the New Testament. This church still
exists today. In the meantime there was peace in 1436 with compromises on
the part of the Empire and the Church. This peace was apparently
stimulated as the more conservative elements of the Hussites were shocked
as some of the radicals formed communist groups. When the conservatives
allied themselves with the orthodox Catholics again, the revolt was put
down and Sigismund of Hungary, the son of Charles IV and a Bohemian,
became king and then Holy Roman Emperor. Then came Albert II, an
Habsburg and then Ladislas V of Hungary (Ladislas I in Bohemia),
although actually George of Podebrad ruled for him. On the death of
Ladislas, George was elected king (1458), but in 1471 the crown reverted to
the kings of Hungary, beginning with Matthias Corvinus. In 1485, at the
treaty of Kutna Hora, the Catholics and the Hussites, then called
Ultraquists, pledged 30 years of peace.

SWITZERLAND

The first half of the century was one of almost constant turmoil between the
various cantons themselves and with the Holy Roman Empire. The Canton
of Uri began expansion westward to get control of the passes into Italy, but
the Swiss were driven out by the Duke of Savoy in 1413. From 1436 to
1450 there was civil war between Zurich and some of her neighbors over
the succession to the domains of the Count of Toggenburg. Zurich allied
itself with the German Emperor, who, in turn, called in the French, but they
were all defeated by the soldiers of Schwyz and the French withdrew. The
emperor made peace at Constance in 1446 and the cantons made their own
peace by 1450. The general effect was to strengthen the Confederacy,
although the country was still allied to the empire. The Swiss cantons were
suppliers of meat to Germany and northern Italy. Geneva re-instituted the
great fair concept that had declined in Champagne in the previous century.
(Ref. 279, 292)

But the Swiss still had wars to fight. From 1474 to 1477 there was the Great
War against Charles the Bold of Burgundy, who had eyes on Alsace. The
Swiss had great victories at Granson and Morat in 1476 and Nancy in 1477,
squashing Charles’ plans. It was after this that Swiss pikemen were in great
demand in Europe as mercenaries. There was war with Milan in 1478 and
even war again with the emperor in 1499 over some territories in the east.
The Swiss had French financial help and by September, in the Treaty of
Basel, the confederation became independent in fact, if not yet formally.
(Ref. 119)

NOTE: Insert Map 46. Activities of the Medici and Fuggers in Western and
Central

Europe c.1500

WESTERN EUROPE

Beginning in mid-century, western Europe started another population boom,
this time to last for two centuries. It has been said that the founding fathers
of the modern state were three western European leaders of this century -
Henry VII of England, Louis XI of France and Ferdinand II of Spain.

SPAIN

The marriage of Juan I, of Castile and Eleanor of Aragon allowed these two
provinces to become united, although at first they kept the monarchies
separate. Ferdinand I of Castile became King of Aragon in 1410 but the
union did not really become complete and final until the marriage of
Ferdinand II and Isabella, in 1474. In the meantime, by 1450 there were
10,000,000 people in Spain, a mixture of Celts, Phoenicians, Carthaginians,
Romans, Visigoths, Vandals, Arabs, Berbers and Jews. A state bank had
opened in 1401 and marine insurance had been established in 1435. The
Church was an inseparable ally of the state and took small account of the
pope in Italy. The king was head of the church and the people were devout.
Moslems and Jews still made up 10% of the people. The Spanish

Inquisition became cruel and money-mad under the Dominican leader,
Torquemada and Spain was made into a unified State-church. For a short
period, there followed a remarkable display of energy. Granada finally
surrendered to the Christians in 1491.

The Genoese, Cristoforo Colombo, a giant of a man at six feet, when most
virile men of that age were about five feet four, thought he could reach the
spice islands of the east by sea by sailing westward, but the task of
convincing Queen Isabella was not easy. Several factors were concerned in
her final decision. Juan Perez, the Queen's confessor, pleaded for the trip;
Granada had fallen, ending 700 years of warfare with the Moors; another
Genoese, John Cabot, had already convinced Henry VII of England that the
trip would be made sooner or later. (Ref. 39) Finally Luis de Santingel
loaned Isabella the money for the glory of God and the Queen desperately
needed to replenish her treasury, already depleted by those last campaigns
against the Moors. The chance of a share of the spice trade from the Indies
(since the Ottomans now had Constantinople and Athens, cutting off the old
trade route) was the final argument. (Ref. 211) (Columbus' trips will be
further detailed under Section VIII, AMERICA, this chapter). In 1492 in
addition to Columbus' commission, the Spanish crowns issued the Edict of
the Exile of the Jews, which led to massive emigrations and eventually
slaughter. This wave of terror shook Spain to its foundations as perhaps
200,000 Jews were expelled. These people had been the real middle class of
Castile - tax gatherers and state administrators, as well as high tax payers.
The chief rabbi of Burgos was also the bishop there in 1415. In Seville the
Bible had been read in Arabic for many generations. But strange tales about
Jews drifted down from the rest of Europe and influenced the Spanish
monarchs. The irony of the expulsion was that King Ferdinand, like most
Spanish noblemen, had Jewish blood through his mother, Juana

Enriquez| footnote]. At this same time slavery was commonplace in Spain.
Rich families had as many as 50 - some Greeks, Russians, Albanians or
Turks, bought at famous slave markets of Caffa on the Black Sea - but most
were Negroes from Africa. (Ref. 211)

The author of the first European novel, La Celestina, was the Jew Fernando
de Rojas, cousin of King Ferdinand. (Ref. 213)

There were 2,700,000 sheep in Spain by 1467 and wool was the chief
agricultural product, along with mutton, milk and cheese. (Ref. 211) At the
end of the century Spain had an epidemic of typhus, brought there in 1490
by soldiers who had been fighting in Cyprus. (Ref. 140) In addition,
incidental to the celebrations upon the return of Columbus from his first
voyage in 1493, a terrible epidemic of syphilis broke out. It was severe,
rapid in progress and of ten fatal and within 4 or 5 years the disease
"toured" Europe. (Ref. 260)

PORTUGAL

On the political front, Portugal finally made peace with Castile in 1411 and
then started their expansion on the African mainland. Their luck was bad as
the plague hit and then they suffered an overwhelming defeat at Tangiers in
1437. Alfonso V, who ruled from 1437 to 1481, was one-half Spanish. The
nobles revolted against him at one time, but he did promote the Ordenacoes
Affonsinas, the first Code of Portuguese Law, in 1146. It was an amalgam
of Roman, Visigothic and customary law.

It was not only gold hunger but shortages of grain, fish and slaves to work
the sugar plantations of Madiera that stimulated the Portuguese merchant
marine of this century. They built fortresses on the Gold Coast of Africa in
the 1480s and by the end of the century were bringing 700 kilograms of
gold and 10,000 slaves to Lisbon every year. (Ref. 8)

In their initiation of the slave trade, the Portuguese had the blessings of the
Catholic Church in that Pope Nicholas V had authorized them to "attack,
subject and reduce to perpetual slavery the Saracens, pagans and other
enemies of Christ southward from Capes Bajador and Non, including all the
coast of Guinea."[footnote] Of course, the black kings and merchants of the
African coast were happy to trade slaves for European cloth, hardware,
spirits or firearms.

Quotation from H.A. Wyndham, The Atlantic and Slavery, published in
London, 1935, page 221, as noted in Reference 211

NOTE: Insert Map 55. The Iberian Peninsula Towards The End of the 15th
Century (1476)

Near the end of the century Joao I] had to suppress another revolt by the
nobles. When Portugal and Spain began to squabble over their overseas
possessions in the new world, the Treaty of Tordesillas made a dividing line
which was only more or less subsequently observed. In 1497, the same year
that Portugal either expelled the Jews or forcibly converted them, Vasco da
Gama, using an Arab navigator, Arab maps and astronomy tables of the
Jew, Abraham Zacuto, sailed around the southern tip of Africa to India and
thus began the commercial supremacy of Portugal. Unfortunately Vasco lost
more than half of his crew to scurvy on the journey. Navigational
improvements were pioneered through Prince Dom Enrique (Henry), the
Navigator, son of Joao II and he brought mathematicians and astronomers,
who made instruments and trigonometric tables to measure latitude. These
improvements also resulted in the discovery and peopling of the Azores as
well as the African coast. (Ref. 150)

FRANCE

The Hundred Years War continued on into this century. Henry V of
England, joined by the ambitious Duke of Burgundy, invaded France in
1415, hoping to seize the French throne. He failed in this but be did manage
to take a portion of the country, including Paris, for a time, following the
battle of Agincourt, when the English, with 6,000 archers, 1,000 men-at-
arms and a few thousand foot soldiers defeated 25,000 French, still wearing
heavy armor. France was actually in ruins, with poverty, amorality, filth,
cruelty, treachery and corruption endemic. This deterioration had been
going on since the last half of the preceding century. In this recession,
market buildings fell into ruins and even the great Halles market place in
Paris declined. (Ref. 292) Nevertheless, the French King Charles VII set up
a new government south of the Loire and after the stimulation of the epic of
Joan D'Arc (originally Jeanne Darc), in 1429, the tide turned. Joan, a
religious mystic, who led the defeated French troops, was burned at the
stake by the British as a witch, but to Catholic France she was a guiding
light. In 1435 the Duke of Burgundy switched sides, transferring his support

to France and with the help of cannon the expulsion of the English soon
followed. First Normandy was reconquered (1440), then Gascony and some
adjacent areas in the 1440s, Burgundy in 1477, Anjou in 1481 and Brittany
in 1491. It was the fall of Bordeaux in 1453 that, in effect, ended the
Hundred Years war.

Thus the kingdom of France emerged on the European map between 1450
and 1490, centralized and capable of sustaining a professional standing
army of about 25,000 men constantly, with about 50,000 more reserves
available if needed. In addition- they had heavy artillery pieces which could
demolish castle walls in a matter of hours, thanks to a century of rapid
improvements in cannon design and manufacture. In this rebuilding Charles
VII was helped immeasurably by the financier, Jacques Coeur, one of the
copper kings. It should be noted, however, that in 1479 Louis XI disbanded
his French infantry forces and made a contract with Swiss mercenary
pikemen. The Swiss propped up the aristocratic-bureaucratic regime for the
next 300 years. (Ref. 137, 8, 260)

NOTE: Insert Map 51. England and France in 1429
NOTE: Insert Map France in A.D. 1453

Under the strange King Louis XI in the last of the century, the government
of France became the most powerful in Latin Christendom but the people
themselves became poorer. It was Louis' son, Charles VIII, who invaded
Italy and held a part of it for a short period. Lyons became the most famous
"fair" center, located on the great trade route through the Rhone Valley and
it prospered accordingly, developing its own stock exchange in 1462.
Toulouse followed with one in 1469. (Ref. 292)

In the south of France, as in Spain, tens of thousands of sheep were moved
annually from the mountains of Provence to winter pasture at Arles. Also in
Provence, communal herds of pigs were driven across country to fatten on
the acorns of Vauduse and Albion.

The development of all this over a period of many, many years had helped
the food situation throughout France and there were only six general
famines between 1200 and 1500, a marked improvement from earlier

centuries. (Ref. 260) The modern French language appeared fully complete
in the works of Francois Villon in this century and Jean Froissart was
another great writer of the period. (Ref. 8, 211, 50) But it is easy to
overestimate the extent of true civilization in Europe in past centuries. The
whole continent, from the Urals to Gibralter was the domain of wolves and
bears. In 1420 wolf packs entered Paris and they were there again in 1438,
attacking people. (Ref. 260)

THE NETHERLANDS AND BELGIUM

This area remained more or less unscathed by the Hundred Years War. In
the first half of the century, present day Holland and Belgium were a part of
Burgundy and ruled by the Burgundy dukes, essentially as a separate entity.
After the duke, Charles the Bold, was killed in 1477, his daughter Mary
saved almost all of the Netherlands and Flanders by marrying the Habsburg
head and getting his help against France. In the process Burgundy became
part of the territories of the Holy Roman emperors Maximilian I and later
Charles V. Trade with England became very important to both areas. The
Dutch now seized control of the herring industry in the North Sea, the
English having granted them the right to seine in their waters and the rise of
Amsterdam was made possible by this herring industry. But about 1500 the
herring disappeared, whether because of a change in the currents,
depredations of larger fish or disease, is not known| footnote]. The results
were far flung and many. The scarcity of fish drove up the price and fishing
fleets were dispersed even to the distant waters of Newfoundland, by
Breton fishermen. (Ref. 122)

Trager (Ref. 137) says that it was a decrease of copepod crustaceans on
which the herring feed. (Original source not given)

In contrast to some parts of Europe, however, meat was commonly eaten in
the Netherlands, even in times of famine. Windmills were particularly
useful in this country for driving bucket chains, which drained water from
the soil and poured it into canals, thus helping in the reclamation of land.
The permanent westerly winds from the Atlantic to the Baltic made these
mills more efficient than those of some countries. (Ref. 260)

Bruges in Belgium was one of the four great trading posts of the Hansa,
along with Tyskebrugge in Bergen (timber and fish), Peterhof in Novgorod
(furs), Steelyard in London (wool and cloth). The first north European stock
exchange developed in Bruges in 1409.

At the end of the century, however, Bruges' harbor silted up and the cloth
center shifted to Antwerp on the Scheldt and that city developed its own
exchange in 1460. (Ref. 8, 292) Coal was used throughout the Low
Countries and was exported, but almost all of their salt came from the
mouth of the Loire. (Ref. 137)

As in Bohemia, various "heretical" groups made their appearances in the
Lowlands at this time, but more of this later. Many great artists developed,
including Herbert and Jan Van Eyck and Roger de la Pasture, also known as
Rogier Van der Weyden. Important to note, too, is the birth in this century
of Erasmus, skeptic, satirist and humanist who was another forerunner of
the Reformation and about whom we shall have much more in the
discussion of ENGLAND, in the next century. (Ref. 50)

BRITISH ISLES

ENGLAND

Among the great powers rising on the Atlantic seaboard, England came last.
From about 1350 to 1450 the English had had a drastic population reduction
from the Black Death, prolonged economic stagnation and sporadic
outbursts of the Hundred Years War against France. As noted above, Henry
V took most of France for a short period and his death may have saved that
continental country, but he almost ruined England because the treasury sank
into irremedial debt. Henry VI went mad and there followed the famous
War of the Roses, lasting from 1454 to 1485, in which the nobles of the
House of York battled those of the House of Lancaster for the throne. It was
a suicide of the Anglo-Norman aristocracy and England was left
impoverished, destitute and desolate, as the

Lancastrians were scattered or destroyed and many of their nobles
decapitated| footnote]. The victorious Yorkists entered London with King
Edward IV, who had already resolved to have as little to do with Parliament
as possible. In 1475 he made a token invasion of France through Calais, the
one remaining English foothold on the continent, but he soon stopped to
parley with Louis XI and a settlement was struck whereby Edward obtained
a lump sum of 75,000 crowns and a yearly payment of 50,000. This was
almost enough to keep him independent of Parliament and let him live the
life of ease, which he so desired.

John Gillingham (Ref. 250), lecturer in history at the London School of
Economics, presents a considerable different view, denying the destruction,
describing the battles as more the wars of gentlemen taking care not to
offend the electorate and hardly affecting the social and economic
development of England. Jasper Ridley (Ref. 291) would agree that the
battles were fought by the royal and noble families and their retainers in a
few counties only, but does remark that there was widespread breakdown in
law and order in neighboring areas during these conflicts

Some would say that his debauchery and promiscuity caused his early death
in 1483, but actually he may well have died of appendicitis. His son Edward
V, the apparent heir, was immediately imprisoned and his uncle took over
the crown as Richard III, claiming that the boy Edward was a bastard and
not entitled to succeed. But Richard, himself, ended up without an heir and
the rival claimant to the throne became Henry Tudor, Earl of Richmond, a
Welshman, who had been forced to flee to Brittany many years before. Now
both Yorkists and Lancasters left England to join him as he prepared an
expedition at the mouth of the Seine. In late summer of 1485, Richmond,
with his English supporters and a body of French troops landed at Milford
Haven, near the southwestern tip of Wales. The Welsh were more than
happy to have the prospect of having one of their own on the throne of
England and many Welsh gentry joined his forces so that he had about
5,000 men as he moved through Shrewsbury and Stafford. In the last of
what should be called the "nobility wars", on Bosworth Field, Richard III
was Slain and Henry Tudor (Tydder) became Henry VII, a wise, sad, careful
monarch, who reformed the administration, centralized the government and
finally left the state respected, orderly, solvent, united and at peace. Henry's
claim to the throne was through his mother, from John of Gaunt, founder of

the House of Lancaster. He married Elizabeth, a princess of the House of
York and thus united the two rival houses. When his first son, Arthur, who
had married Catharine of Aragon, died, Henry arranged for his second son
Henry (later Henry VIII) to marry the widow, thus strengthening the
alliance with Spain. (Ref. 50, 29)

During this 15th century England experienced a so-called "agrarian
revolution", which was a transition from grain to sheep raising. This, in
itself, caused a social and economic catastrophe, with the small farmer
eliminated, the flatlands depopulated and the food supply decreased so that
heavy imports were necessary. The country did experience a mild
renaissance in the last quarter of the century, however, as she began to build
her own merchant ships and to export coal from Northumberland. By 1500
she was ruling the North Sea trade. Giovanni Cabato, sailing under an
English charter and the Anglicized name, John Cabot, discovered
Newfoundland and explored the American coastline from Labrador to
Delaware, just a few years after Columbus' initial trip to the new world.

The people of England were a vigorous stock - coarse, profane and perhaps
a touch cruel. Probably only 40% could read. As if the Black Death were
not enough, in 1485 a new disease, characterized by severe sweating,
appeared in England and was called sudor anglicus or the "sweating
sickness". Death could occur within days, particularly in strong men.
Paradoxically old women and children were spared. After appearing at
intervals into the next century in England and in some outbreaks in northern
Europe a little later, the disease, whatever it was, vanished forever. (Ref.
122, 50, 125)

Two men who were to play most important parts in the history of England
were born near the end of this century. Thomas Wolsey was the son of an
Ipswich butcher, who had been in some trouble with the law. Thomas
enrolled in Oxford University at the age of II (instead of the usual 14 years)
and 40 years later was to become the most powerful man in western
Europe. Thomas More's father was a London barrister and his grandfather
had been a butler. He too attended Oxford, beginning at the then usual age
of 14. He was a good student, excelling in Latin and Greek and eventually

ended up in the study of law. We shall hear much more of both these men in
the next century. (Ref. 291)

In the last chapter we mentioned the early protestations against the
organized church by John Wycliffe. As his followers waned, the church
came back into power. Some Lollards persisted, however, and finally
presented a statement of principles to Parliament opposing clerical celibacy,
transubstantiation, image worship, necessity of confession to priests,
ceremonies of exorcism, worship of saints, etc. Some of these men were
executed for heresy, probably under the statue "de Heretico Comburendo"
which had been passed at the beginning of the century. In this period under
discussion, the king's government was carried on chiefly by priests. The
Lord Chancellor was almost always a priest and about half the Privy
Council (similar to a modern cabinet) were bishops. This link between the
Church and the government service was one of the reasons for the
corruption in the Church that was apparent by the end of this century.
Nearly every priest was corrupt and this was generally accepted as normal.
The priesthood appealed to practical men rather than to spiritual
individuals, who usually preferred the monasteries. The word "religious"
was used exclusively to refer to monks and nuns. The priests were called
the "secular clergy", but it was they who alone could grant licences,
dispensations, absolution after confession and perform the miracle of
transforming bread and wine into the Body and Blood of Christ at Mass. By
this 15th century priests no longer took a vow of celibacy, although most
novice monks and nuns did. (Ref. 291)

At the very end of the century Henry VII put down an insurrection in
Cornwall, where the people had risen to protest taxes imposed for defense
against Scottish invasion forces. (Ref. 50) Some remarks about the legal
system in England are in order. There was a good deal of antagonism
between the barristers and the priests of the civil service. The latter had
usually studied canon law and also the old Roman civil law, codified by
Justinian in the 6th century. Although parts of the Roman law had survived
in most of western Europe and even in Scotland, the English common law
had developed along different lines. By this 15th century torture was freely
used in political cases brought before the Privy Council, where the civilians,
mostly priests, conducted the trials. (Ref. 291) Of incidental interest is the

fact that construction of Westminister Abbey was under way as the century
ended. (Ref. 169)

SCOTLAND

The infant heir, James I, while going to France for safety, was taken
prisoner en route by the English and on the almost immediate death
thereafter of Robert II, the regent, Albany, actually ruled Scotland in an
uneasy peace that allowed some recovery of prosperity amid good harvests.
The Scottish church achieved opulence and the ecclesiastical income
equaled all other incomes combined.

The ordinary Scottish man living in the last half of the century had a rough
life, but in a warm, human society. The crown laid down all sorts of rules -
such as no drinking in taverns after nine o'clock, no staying with friends
when traveling (i.e. must stay in taverns), every man with a plow and 8
oxen was to plant a designated amount of wheat, peas and beans, commoner
women could not wear clothes of silk, scarlet gowns or trimming of martin
fur and must have their heads covered. The peasant with his kin usually
worked 30 acres with a wooden plow and oxen and lived in a turf house,
such acreage "leased" to him for five years. At the end of the century, James
IV did give his serfs the land in fee, however, and encouraged his barons to
do likewise. The great burghs, started by the merchants, were becoming
cities, with vermin, wandering dogs and free-running swine, fish stalls,
general squalor and plenty of beggars. Each man kept horse and weapons
ready to be available for war within 12 hours of the first beacon flare. John
Major, an educated historian of the times, described two nations in Scotland
- the wild Scots of the mountains and the householding Scots of the south,
both-quarrelsome and contentious, with the "lairds" thinking of nothing else
but fighting. The two "peoples" had different tongues and hated each other.
The land was rich in fish, wildfowl, deer and immense quantities of salmon
and herring were exported to France, Flanders and England. (Ref. 170)

The last two-thirds of the century was a bloody era with the ransomed
James I, James II and III all meeting violent deaths and the nobles did their
share of killing each other.

"For eight years Douglases and Hepburns, Stewarts, Ruthvens and
Crawfords, Kennedys and Ogilivies fought with or against each other on
both sides of the Forth."[footnote] James IV married Margaret Tudor, sister
of the future King Henry VIII of England and became the best loved of the
Stewarts. A Renaissance prince, it was he who made his Parliament pass the
first compulsory education act in 1496. Scotland acquired the Orkneys and
the Shetlands from Denmark in 1472. After 1487 the bishops and abbots
were nominated by the king, a feature which led to a deterioration of the
already corrupt clergy.

This quotation was taken from page 140 of Prebble (Ref. 170)

IRELAND

Ireland continued to be dominated by England although by 1500 English
influence had waned to be confined to a small border area while the
remainder of the country drifted back to a squalid freedom. (Ref. 8)

WALES

For centuries the Welsh had seethed just under the point of open rebellion
against the English and in 1405, with the help of French troops Owen
Glendower actually opened fighting. It was 1415 before this rebellion was
finally ended and Glendower pardoned. (Ref. 222) Even so, it was not until
1485, when the Welsh Henry Tydder (Tudor) became Henry VII of
England, that the Welsh began to live peaceably with their English
neighbors. (Please see page 720)

Scandinavia

NORWAY, SWEDEN, AND DENMARK

At the death of Queen Margaret in 1412, her grandnephew Eric, in whose
name she had actually ruled, allowed the Union of Calmar, which had
loosely bound the three nations, to become in essence a Danish Empire. He
introduced the “Sound Dues”, charging all ships going to and from the
Baltic through the Danish sound and built castles (including the famous
Kronborg castle at Helsingor — English “Elsinore”) along both sides of the
narrow Strait to protect the area. The dues produced enormous sums of
money for Denmark in the next several years, but they also produced
immense political troubles. All of the Scandinavian countries were
protective of their coastal waters. The city of Bergen in Norway was
completely under the control of the Hanseatic League, but when some of
their fishermen caught some English poaching in the area, they bound the
English and threw them overboard to drown.

In Sweden a peasant uprising, initiated by Englebrecht Engelbrechtson
against the king, was backed by the nobles. The revolt spread to Norway,
with strong feelings developed against the somewhat autocratic Eric. When
the nobles’ pressure reached its height, Eric abdicated and went to Gotland.
The aristocracy of all three countries then chose his nephew, Christopher of
Bavaria, as his successor. He died in 1448 without a son and Count
Christian of Oldenburg, distantly related to the old Danish royal line, was
chosen and accepted by Norway and Denmark. But Sweden named Karl
Knutsson as its king. (English texts list him as Charles VIII.) Christian
promptly attacked the Swedes but lost at the battle of Brunke Hill, in 1471.
As a dowry for his daughter Margaret, who married King James III of
Scotland, Christian gave the Norwegian Islands of Shetland and Orkney to
Scotland. He administered the state well, but like his predecessors, his court
was filled with Germans and he was financially dependent on the Hansa
cities. Christian arranged a union of Schleswig and Holstein under the
Danish crown in 1460 and founded the University of Copenhagen in 1479.
On his death, his son Hans was elected successor in both Norway and
Denmark. By that time the Swedish nobles were ready to get rid of their
King Sten Sture, but couldn’t quite get this promoted before Hans lost his
patience and marched on Stockholm with an army, only to be repulsed by
Sten Sture the Younger. The clergy supported the King of Denmark, but the
nobles pretty well controlled Sweden, with its rising commerce and
industry. The University of Uppsala was founded in 1477 and printing was

introduced soon afterward. In 1500 King Hans and his cousin, Duke
Frederick of Holstein, attacked the Frisians on the fertile marchland at the
base of the Jutland peninsula, but they were badly defeated and King Hans
was not only humiliated, but then found that some of his subjects,
particularly the Swedish peasants, were now ready to throw him over. (Ref.
34, 117, 237, 119)

It is of some interest that what might be called the first Swedish Riksdag, or
Parliament, resulted when Engelbrektson, mentioned above, called a
meeting of the Estates (nobles, clergy, burghers and peasants) which then
elected him Regent, in 1435. He was murdered in a year and the regime
collapsed, in part due to the attitude of the Swedish bishops.

FINLAND

Finland remained a province of Sweden, although the Finns, themselves,
were little affected by neighboring civilizations. (Ref. 260)

OVERSEAS SCANDIVAVIAN CENTERS

An example of the extensive use of various materials for money, in Europe,
can be found in a market price list from Iceland, where one dried fish would
purchase a horse-shoe, three would buy a pair of women's shoes and one
hundred a barrel of wine. (Ref. 260)

EASTERN EUROPE

At the beginning of the century the political boundaries were not greatly
different than after the Peace of Stralsund.

SOUTHERN BALTIC AREA

Some 200 years of struggle in this area between German, Slav and Balt
culminated in the battle of Tannenberg of 1411, where the Teutonic Knights
were vanquished by the Polish-Lithuanian army. Lithuania, as a Grand
Duchy, was part of the Polish State. Prussia, although partially still under
control of the Knights, continued to decline until the Peace of Torun of
1466, under which Pomerelia, Danzig, etc. went under Polish rule. (Ref. 8)
In East Prussia, where the Teutonic Knights still held power, the bonds of
serfdom were increased and in 1494 Prussian land owners were given the
right to have runaway fugitive serfs handed back to them.

NOTE: Insert Map 44. The Hanseatic League and the Political Situation in
Northern Europe after the Peace of Stralsund in 1370

Casimir IV, previously Grand Duke of Lithuania, was one of the great rulers
of Poland with its Lithuanian Duchy. When his son Vladislav assumed the
throne he became king of Bohemia also. As noted previously, the union of
Poland and Lithuania had its problems, basically arising from the fact that
eastern Lithuania was orthodox in faith and Russian in language. The Polish
ascendance thus brought aggravation of issues arising from the religious
and ethnic differences. Mazour says: "The religious disagreement held the
conflicting interest of Poland and Russia even further apart and made deep
imprints upon the course of political development in eastern Europe for
centuries to come."[footnote] Casimir IV curtailed the independence of the
Church somewhat, by making the bishops appointed by the king. Poland
and Lithuania were greatly dependent upon river transport, using immense
rafts of tree trunks with a central cabin for the sailors. Great wharfs were
built at Torun (Thorn), Kovno and Brest-Litovsk. Jewish merchants were
very important in the trade of 15th century Poland. (Ref. 292) Additional
Notes

Quotation taken from page 38, Mazour (Ref. 135)

RUSSIA (See map in section on RUSSIA in 19th century C.E.)

It should be noted that the entire region, which we have just discussed as
Lithuania, as well as part of Poland, is today part of the U.S.S.R., so that in
a sense we could have transferred the last paragraphs to this heading of

"RUSSIA", but we have preferred to keep the old historical regions
separated. The Times Atlas of World History (Ref. 8) calls the Lithuanian-
Polish area "West Russia" and the Moscovy area "East Russia"

Five years before Constantinople fell to the Turks, the Russian Church had
declared her independence from Byzantium . This church was the sole
patron of letters and arts in Russia. Occasionally the Mongol Khan still
mustered attacks and Basil II was captured in 1445 in a serious Russian
defeat. Still, the Muscovite rulers managed to hold on to the title of Grand
Prince and gradually suzerainty over Novgorod was established and tribute
exacted. Although at the beginning of the century the people of Novgorod
were still using small Tartar coins, scraps of martens' skins and bits of
stamped leather for exchange, by 1425 they began to mint very coarse,
silver money. The population of that area continued to increase and
commerce developed to the point that almost compelled the unification of
the country.

Ivan III the Great, of Moscow, began unification by conquering neighboring
Novgorod and then extended his rule to part of Finland, the Arctic and the
Urals. He then took some of Lithuania and played the Mongol groups in the
east against each other so that in warfare they gradually melted away. Ivan
assumed the title of Caesar or Czar, and claimed inheritance to all the
religious and political authority of the now defunct Byzantium. Toynbee
(Ref. 220) calls this the founding of the Universal State of the Russian
branch of the Orthodox Christian Society. The type of Christianity was the
eastern, "orthodox", court-ruled form, which had reached Russia long
before, through Bulgarian missionaries. The divine right philosophy of
absolute power began to be put into practical form. The Assumption
Cathedral in the fortress Kremlin, the largest in Russia, was built in 1479 by
Ridolfo Fioravanti of Bologna, Italy. Ivan the Great commissioned the first
stone palace of the Kremlin, the Palace of Facets, in 1487 and his actual
living quarters, Terem Palace, was built in 1499. It was a dark and dreary
place, with only candles for light. The first Code of Laws for Russia was
compiled by Sudebnik in 1497. (Ref. 135, 9, 131, 220)

Russia's most noteworthy international position in the last 40 years of this 1
5th century was its isolation, cut off from almost all contact with the outside

world by the hostility of adjacent Swedes, Livonians, Poles and Turks. It
had no access to the sea in any direction, a feature which remained one of
its great concerns for centuries to come. Even the Black Sea remained
unattainable. The Ottoman Mehemmed II established a bridgehead by
capturing Caffa from the Genoese and brought the Khanate of the Crimea
under his control, this being the most significant successor of the Golden
Horde. A land route to the Crimea was finally established via
Constantinople in 1484. By mid-century, in addition to the Crimean
Khanate just mentioned, the original Golden Horde had broken up into the
Khanate of Kazan in the north, the Khanate of Astrakhan in the southeast
on the northwest shore of the Caspian and a Khanate retaining the old
Golden Horde name in the southwest. (Ref. 8, 137)

NOTE: Insert Map: 15TH Century Poland, Lithuania and Russia

Note:In Poland the old days of obtaining salt by evaporation disappeared
as galleries and shafts were dug down 300 meters, with the use of great
winches and teams of horses to bring blocks of salt to the surface. In this
way 300 to 500 tons a year were produced. (Ref. 292)

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CONMAUBWNR

Europe: A.D. 1501 to 1600

EUROPE (The time of the Reformation and beginning of world
exploration)

Back to Europe: A.D. 1401 to 1500

At the beginning of this century Europe had a population of about
69,000,000 and it was increasing rapidly. Commerce and financial
transactions remained essentially linked to the great fairs held regularly at
centers between northern Italy and Flanders and there was a continuous
inflation year after year. In a little over 100 years in France, prices rose a
total of 627.6% (i.e. from 1471 to 1598). (Ref. 260) In the second half of
the century, private trading with traveling merchants became a common
feature, probably because the public markets were becoming inadequate
and too closely controlled. Advertising was already flourishing and land
was bought and sold frequently. The commission system, whereby all
merchants worked on commission for other merchants, who did the same
for them, became quite common by the end of the century. (Ref. 292)

Braudel (Ref. 292) makes the interesting observation that the first 2/3 of the
century was an age of accelerated social promotion, with the highest
bourgeoisie group climbing from the trade background to join the limited
ruling classes, all over Europe. As a section of the old nobility disappeared,
it was replaced by these wealthy new-comers. At the end of the century this
trend was reversed - "the door to social advancement was in effect slammed
shut, the ladder pulled up." In general, successful merchant families only
survived as such for 2 or 3 generations. After that they abandoned trade to
live quietly on country estates or when possible slipped into the nobility
class.

Roads in Europe were chiefly tracks a yard wide, suitable for horsemen,
although sometimes there were adjacent footpaths for pedestrians and
herds. When wheeled carriages appeared in large numbers in this century
they posed real problems, making severe town surgery necessary in most
places. The new thoroughfares, however, in the long run helped both
hygienically and commercially. The inhabitants of towns of ten spent only

part of their lives there because they had to participate in the harvests, even
in such busy places as Flanders. Algerian pirates had no trouble taking
Gibraltar in 1540 because, as they knew, all the inhabitants were outside the
walls, helping with the grape harvest. (Ref. 260)

In spite of almost constant warfare and religious strife, or perhaps because
of the latter, men of education in science, theology, art and medicine
seemed to rove from one European country to another. Because many were
born in one nation, educated in another and worked finally in a third or
fourth location it would be difficult to describe all of them under the
sectional divisions of this manuscript. Some of these remarkable men are
therefore listed in this paragraph and one might just classify them as
"Europeans". Vesalius, born in Belgium, but a student in France and Italy,
wrote one of the greatest medical works of all time on the human anatomy.
It was published in Basel, Switzerland in 1543 and included many
illustrations drawn by the great artist, Titian. In fact it may be said that the
year 1543 marks the beginning of the "Scientific Revolution" because of
three features:

1. The anatomical drawings of Andreas Vesalius

2. the translation of Greek mathematics and physics of Archimedes

3. Copernicus' treatise - "The Revolution of the Heavenly Orbs." (Ref.
21)

Roaming central Europe there was Paracelsus, part quack, part magician,
part crazy, but posting some remarkable cures and establishing himself as
the father of chemotherapy, as he used chemical drugs in place of vegetable
remedies. Georg Agricola was a minerologist and mining engineer of this
era. Geography was enhanced as Magellan's crew completed
circumnavigation of the globe in 1518. The microscope was invented in
1590, the thermometer in 1592 and the pendulum clock by Huygens, late in
the century. Simon Stevinus wrote an epochal treatise on "The Decimal" in
1585, Fracastoro of Verona wrote on syphilis, Ambroise Pare changed
many of the concepts of military surgery and modern botany can be said to
begin with Leonhard Fuchs of Bavaria. (Ref. 51, 8, 213, 125)

In spite of the advances in medical knowledge, general health in Europe
was poor. Of every five children born, two died in infancy and one more

died before maturity. The Royal College of Surgeons was established in
England in 1505, stimulating medicine there.

By 1600 western physicians knew that scurvy could be prevented by green
herbs or citrus fruits, but they were unable to convince the various
admiralties. The potato, which was much smaller than that of today, was
introduced to Europe through Spain from America about 1534, but it was
not well accepted in some areas, some even thinking that the vegetable
caused leprosy. After sugar cane had been taken from Africa to South
America, the importation of colonial sugar from Brazil and the Caribbean
became very significant in international trade. The Portuguese dumping of
molasses at Antwerp soon doomed the honey-bee, because the price was so
much lower than honey. (Ref. 122, 211) But grain, flour, and bread were the
food of Europe. Obtaining bread was the major preoccupation of all and
whenever the price went up, violence was threatened. (Ref. 260)

To understand the political intrigues of a very complicated Europe in this
century one must realize that there were eight different, powerful factions
present, which may be enumerated as follows:

¢ Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor and King of Spain
e The nobles of Germany

e The Protestants of Germany and later of France

e Francis I, King of France

e The nobles of France

e The Pope

e Henry VIII, King of England

e The Turks

There was almost constant warfare and strife throughout the continent, and
these eight factions lined up in various ways at various times and on various
sides, to battle each other. For example, Francis I remained Catholic, but at
times helped Protestant nobles in Germany and Charles V at other times,
but he also made alliances with the Turks against the emperor and with the
Moors against Italy. The pope alternately warred against Charles V and then
was on his side. Henry VII backed the French part of the time and Charles
and the Germans at other times. (Ref. 51) It is hoped that in the following
paragraphs some of these complications may be partially unraveled.

SOUTHERN EUROPE

The Mediterranean was no longer able to feed itself and it had to buy Baltic
grain so that there was a resulting movement of Spanish silver (from
America) to north Europe. The Mediterranean world was now always close
to famine and this tended to dictate the course of world events, including
the politics and wars. (Ref. 213)

EASTERN MEDITERRANEAN ISLANDS

In this century the Turks ran the Venetians out of Cyprus but the latter held
on to their other possessions. In 1522 Suleiman the Magnificent appeared
off Rhodes with 700 warships containing an army of 200,000. Although the
Knights Hospitallers, with about 500 knights and 6,000 soldiers, held out
for 6 months, they finally had to withdraw. A few years later the Holy
Roman Emperor Charles V gave the Knights the islands of Malta and Gozo
for their headquarters and they henceforth were known as the "Knights of
Malta". Suleiman attacked them also on Malta in 1565 with 373 warships
and 40,000 men. Terrible warfare continued for nearly 5 months and about
2/3 of the attackers were killed and only about 600 of the 9,000 defenders
were left alive and unwounded, but they held. Turkish sea-power was
crippled by this defeat. The Knights regrouped, started work on a new
capital city and a great hospital. (Ref. 38, 86)

GREECE AND UPPER BALKANS

All of the Balkan area, including Greece, was under nominal control of the
Ottoman Turks, but in some areas there was considerable local autonomy.
At the end of the century (1593) when the Turks were again at war with
Austria, Sigismund Bathory, Prince of Transylvania (central Romania)
sided with the Austrians. The emperor, however, took Transylvania from
Bathory and then Moldavia from Michael, to dominate this area for the
remainder of the century. In the more southern areas a feudal aristocracy
maintained estates and fiefs through many generations. (Ref. 119, 292)
Although some Greek families and merchants living in Constantinople and

coastal cities, such as Smyrna, were very prosperous, Greece itself sank into
obscurity and poverty. (Ref. 38)

The eastern Balkans were a great source of cattle for Central Europe and
Italy, sending some 200,000 head each year. (Ref. 260) Even so, as in
Eastern Europe, large areas moved back into a "second" serfdom -
producing raw materials only - not finished goods. Idria, in the Julian Alps
of Yugoslavia, became an important source of mercury, which was shipped
clear to America for use in the silver mining process. The Austrian state
took over these mines as a monopoly, in 1580. (Ref. 292)

ITALY

France and Spain had begun to fight over possession of Italy at the end of
the last century, when French armies under Charles VIII invaded, using new
batteries of light, mobile, bronze, field artillery, firing iron cannon balls.
"Modern warfare" might be said to have begun in great battles at Ravenna
in 1512 and Marignano in 1515. (Ref. 213) "The peninsula then became a
theater of war where foreign powers competed for control of the Italians’
superior wealth and skill."[footnote| For awhile the stronger city-states held
out, as for example in 1508, when the Venetians stood against the League of
Cambrai, which included Pope Julius H, Emperor Maximilian and the kings
of France and Spain. Even Rome did not escape the terror of foreign
invasion. In 1527 Emperor Charles sent the Duke of Bourbon south against
the papal forces and the Venetians, with Spanish troops and German
mercenaries. When the Duke reached the gates of Rome, he asked
permission to march through, was ref used and so fought his way into the
city. Although Bourbon was killed, his men slaughtered every man, woman
and child they encountered on the streets. The pope and his cardinals fled,
while looting went on for 12 days, stopped only by the promise of large
monetary settlements from the Catholic hierarchy. In general, the Italian
cities hated each other, yet managed to support each other against invaders.
(Ref. 292)

Quotation from McNeill (Ref. 279), page 79

The primacy of Italian cities further declined as the Mediterranean became
the scene of struggles between the two power-houses of the time - the
Spanish Habsburgs and the Ottoman Turks. Milan became ruled by a
Spanish governor; Naples, Sicily and Sardinia by Spanish viceroys. Genoa
retained its western colony of Corsica, but only after a long revolt late in the
century (1551-1569), with the insurgents receiving help from the Turks.
Otherwise Genoa, too, was tied economically to Spain. This link with
wealthy Spain and the richness of the town of Genoa, itself, did not
alleviate the wretchedness of the lower class. The homeless poor of Genoa
sold themselves as galley slaves every winter. (Ref. 260) One redeeming
feature was an attempt at rejuvenation of the old "Champagne" fairs, which
had first moved to Geneva, then to Lyons and finally now to Piacenza, near
Genoa. It cannot be denied that it was mainly Genoese who financed the
credit operations allowing Spain and others to develop the great trade
operations with the New World, at least up until 1568. After that the
Piacenza fairs centralized the Genoese business transactions and
international payments. (Ref. 292)

Venice was threatened by land and sea, but struggled to stay independent,
although it had frequent famines with people begging and often dying in the
public square. The entire population was also temporarily incapacitated in
1588 by what was later called "grippe". Even the Grand Council was
completely empty. The disease then spread to Milan, France, Spain and
even the Americas. (Ref. 260) The famine, felt throughout the
Mediterranean, was partially relieved in 1591 when wealthy merchants
organized a spectacular diversion of northern ships, loaded with wheat and
rye, into the Mediterranean. Portuguese merchants of Antwerp were among
those making allegedly 300% profit on these ships, but that did not matter
to starving Italians. (Ref. 292)

Naples was one of the largest cities of Europe and an extravagant place,
with the Neapolitan nobles striving to keep favor at the court of the Spanish
viceroy. (Ref. 292) In general, southern Italy was Spain's and northwest
Italy belonged to France. The other great powers, England and Germany, by
remote measures changed sides from year to year and there was much
confusion. In the end, Italy was devastated and financially exhausted. To
add insult to injury, both syphilis[ footnote] and typhus appeared in Europe

during the long series of Italian wars, lasting from 1494 to 1559. In Italy
syphilis was called the "French Disease"; the Spanish called it "Naples
Disease". Gonorrhea was also rampant. Typhus swept the peninsula in 1505
and again in 1528 while the first great influenza epidemic struck in 1510
and plague was in Rome in 1522. (Ref. 8, 140, 125)

McNeill makes the interesting suggestion that syphilis may have been a
transition from the old, endemic disease, yaws. (Ref. 140)

The papacy had its own history in this century. Caesar Borgia, son of Pope
Alexander VI and a former cardinal, attempting to save Italy for the papacy
in 1502 in his capacity as the Duke of the Romagna, joined the French in an
attack on Naples to free it from the Spanish. The new pope, Julius IT (1503-
1513), frustrated his schemes, however, and he then turned to the Spanish
side. Julius II, one of the greater popes, was a warrior and somewhat
morose. He was followed by happy Leo X, who believed that joy should be
unconfined, but who failed to realize the seriousness of the developing
theological situation. Rome reached new heights of liberty and sexuality.
Martin Luther came, saw Rome, was shocked and went home to Germany
to initiate the reformation. (Ref. 51)

In contrast to the turmoil on the political and religious scenes, however, the
first half of this century also marked the apogee of the Renaissance, with
intellectual and artistic supremacy. Michelangelo and Raphael continued
their works and Titian added his classical art. Leonardo da Vinci lived well
into this century, now residing chiefly in Milan and supported by the French
King Louis XII, who controlled Milan most of this period. Subsequently he
was subsidized by Francis I. It was also the time of Aretino, Santi, Cellini
and last but not least Machiavelli, the amoral, political philosopher, who
undoubtedly influenced the monarchies of the world for years to come.
Wealth and urban development was concentrated chiefly in the
Mediterranean and in Italy in particular, with the only cities of more than
100,000 in the western world being Naples, with 300,000, Venice, Milan,
Constantinople and Paris. Rice was now grown throughout the peninsula,
actually as an emergency foodstuff and the hard work involved began to
make a sharp demarcation between the proletariat laborers and the capitalist
owner. (Ref. 260) Communications were difficult, as evidenced by the fact
that a message took 27 days to go from Venice to London, 46 days to

Lisbon, 37 days to Constantinople, 80 days to Damascus, 65 days to
Alexandria and even some 22 days just to go to Palermo, Sicily. Even so,
Tuscany, Venice and Genoa moved tens of thousands of tons of grain from
the Baltic and the Black Sea, through international merchants and letter of
exchange in Nurenberg and Antwerp. (Ref. 260) Venice had commerce with
the Hanseatic League through Flanders and Genoese merchants had similar
connections as well as contact all over the Mediterranean and particularly at
Seville, as we have seen. Florence bankers of the Medici family still
controlled the capital in most northern European capitals. However, when
Cosimo de Medici created a guard of 2,000 horsemen in Florence in 1531,
the cost of the horses ruined him. (Ref. 260, 121, 8)

People, in general, were not what we might call "cultured" in the 16th
century. Silver forks were used at table in Venice about 1581, but the
custom did not last long and they were not used elsewhere, except in
France. At this time the potato, corn, beans and squash spread to northern
Italy. (Ref. 45, 50)

CENTRAL EUROPE

GERMANY AND AUSTRIA

Germany consisted of a number of autonomous states and in the beginning
of the century, at least, Austria was just another German-speaking sub-
kingdom, all a part of the Holy Roman Empire. As noted previously, the
"Electors" of the various German states chose an emperor, who was
nominally over all, although his actual power over any particular state was
probably little or none. Maximilian I (Habsburg) of Austria opened the
century as that emperor and made his capital at Innsbruck. He married into
the House of Burgundy and had his son marry Juana of Castile and Aragon,
as well as arranging that his grandchildren marry into the royal families of
Bohemia and Hungary. Thus, at the end of his reign, the Habsburgs were
well entrenched in all of central and western Europe and their home base of
Austria was a power to be reckoned with. Maximilians' grandson followed

him as king of Austria as Ferdinand I, a ruler who had constant troubles
with the Turks on the eastern border. In 1529 the Ottomans were actually
under the walls of Vienna, where they were supplied by camel trains. But
there were also peasant revolts in both Germany and Austria in 1525 and
latent social war continued for more than another century. Peasants
everywhere shared more or less constant poverty and low living standards,
yet managed to snatch a precarious existence from the soil. (Ref. 292)

Ferdinand's brother, Charles of Ghent, raised in Flanders, inherited the
throne of Spain, where he was known as Charles (or Carlos) I. In 1520 he
was chosen as the Holy Roman Emperor as Charles V and by 1550 the
Habsburg Empire was at its height, including all of Spain, the Balearic
Islands, Italy (excepting the papal states and Venice), Sardinia, Sicily, the
Netherlands, all of Germany, Austria, Hungary (that part not held by the
Turks), Bohemia and parts of Serbia. On the European continent proper,
only Portugal and France and the small areas of Italy previously mentioned,
were out of the empire. In addition there were vast overseas holdings in the
Americas.

The Fuggers, with headquarters at Augsburg, furnished the money for
Charles V and their operations stretched from Danzig to Lisbon and from
Budapest to Rome, to Moscow and even to Chile, where their interests
extended to silver, copper and mercury mining. Jakob Fugger had learned
double-entry bookkeeping in Venice while it was unknown in Germany at
that time. The Augsburg merchants also owned silver mines in Bohemia
and the Alps and their city rivalled Antwerp as a trade center, particularly
for central and eastern European communities. In this connection we must
also mention the Welsers of Augsburg, whose financial dealings also
penetrated Europe, the Mediterranean and even the New World. But the
state always kept a hand in. Augustus I of Saxony owned 2,822 Kuxen
(shares) in the mines of his state. These various mines brought together for
the first time huge concentrations of labor. In 1550, in the mines of the
Tyrol there were 12,000 workers. 500 to 600 men were used solely to keep
pumping water that threatened the tunnels. In the last half of the century,
however, mining in central Europe declined, apparently because of falling
profits, destruction of forestland with resulting high cost of fuel and

NOTE: Insert Map 57. Europe in 1556. The Habsburg Dominions

One of the very colorful and productive personalities of this period was
Theophrastus Bombastus von Hohenheim, commonly called Paracelsus (d.
1541) He obtained a doctor's degree at Ferrara in Italy but then barnstormed
Germany, denouncing the medical classics and their followers and actually
adding something to pharmacology, although he still thought disease was
caused by influences of the stars and planets. The "sweating sickness",
leprosy and epidemic chorea, which had been prominent diseases of the
preceding century, were beginning to disappear, but syphilis was common
and gonorrhea rampant. These two venereal diseases were directly
responsible for the suppression of communal baths, which had been popular
in Germany. Also becoming more common were typhus, diphtheria, small-
pox, measles and scurvy (among northern sailors). Ergotism reached
endemic levels, bringing insanity and death to thousands who ate bread
made from the infected rye. (Ref. 125, 222) Meat was plentiful, with herds
of up to 20,000 half-wild cattle coming into Germany at Buttsedt, near
Weimar. Others arrived from Switzerland. Wild horses - that is, horses that
had returned to a wild state, although not usually eaten - were well
distributed all over Europe and particularly in northwest Germany, Alsace
and the Vosges. There was an extensive copper mining industry at Mansfeld
in Saxony. Because of the poor agriculture in the mountain regions of
Swabia about Lake Constance, the peasants there had become linen-
workers. (Ref. 292)

The various German municipalities and states remained more or less
independent under their own dukes or princes. The Margrave of
Brandenburg ruled extensive territories between the Netherlands and
Poland. The apparent precocity of some of these medievals can be a source
of continued amazement to us in the 20th century. The Margrave's brother,
Albert of Brandenburg, was in 1515, at the age of 25, Archbishop of
Mageburg and Bishop of Halberstadt and trying to become Archbishop of
Mainz, which would automatically make him one of the seven Electors of
the empire, like his brother. To help him buy dispensations to obtain this
Archbishopric, which was to cost 10,000 ducats, the pope issued an
indulgence to anyone who contributed money for the building of a new
cathedral in Rome - such indulgence to shorten the stay in purgatory for the

contributor and all his relations. Secretly, half the money was to go, not to
the cathedral, but to the Fuggers, who would loan Albert the fee for his
Archbishopric. The duty of raising the money in Germany was entrusted to
Johann Tetzel, about whom we shall hear more later. (Ref. 291)

There was an increasing close connection between Brandenburg and East
Prussia and in 1539 the Elector of Brandenburg (a Hohenzollern) was
awarded the rights of co-vassalage over East Prussia, together with Albert
of Hohenzollern, who had now become the Grand Master of the Teutonic
Knights. Bavaria was already ruled by the Wittelsbach family. (Ref. 177)

The great story of this century in Germany, however, is that of the
Reformation. Although we have seen the previews of the revolt against the
Catholic Church in Wiclif and Huss, the true Reformation began here with
Martin Luther. The stage was set when Pope Leo X issued the most famous
of all indulgences - the one mentioned above regarding money to finish the
new St Peters Church and secretly to indirectly finance an Archbishopric
for Albert of Brandenburg. The Dominican, Tetzel, was sent out into
Germany to peddle Absolution of all sins, past and present, release of
relatives from Purgatory and various other indulgences for various sums of
money. When Tetzel approached Saxony, the local ruler, Frederick the
Wise, asked Martin Luther, Catholic priest and professor at the University
of Wittenberg, for approval of Tetzel 's procedures. Luther refused
approval; Tetzel denounced Luther; Luther countered with the posting of 95
theses condemning various practices of the pope and the Reformation had
started. This was in 1517.

Martin Luther was a complex man, brought up under the sternest discipline
and plagued all his life with the devil, demons and witches. His reformed
theology was chiefly against the popes and their corrupt hierarchy. He
argued for the Bible against papal decree. He thought that not good works,
but faith in Christ alone, brought salvation from Hell and that this was
preordained and only a few could make it. The pope issued Bulls against
Luther and Luther wrote books against the pope - in German, so the people
could read them. His theology went back to Augustine, taking the New
Testament very literally. But he also revered the Old Testament, which he
translated into German. His God was more like the old Yahweh of the

Hebrews. He felt that priests should marry and eventually did so, himself.
As he got older he got more and more intolerant, vehement and militant,
damned all knowledge and reason and would have everyone return to the
old, simple, agrarian life. In the end he declared Zwingli and other
Protestants who had appeared on the scene, as heretics. He defended the
divine rights of kings and glorified war as the work of God. He exalted the
State as the sole source of order and gave a premonition of Imperial
Germany to come. At the time, however, German unity was hampered, not
furthered, but we are getting ahead of our chronological story.

A year after Charles V became emperor in 1521, the Diet of Worms was
called to decide what to do with Luther. The resulting "Edict of Worms"
made Luther an outcast and ordered his works burned. He went into
seclusion for a year, but the revolution continued anyway in a peaceful way
for awhile. In 1524, however, the Peasants’ War developed as 30,000
impoverished people in southern Germany started a social revolt against
nobles and priests. Religion was only part of the cause, but out of this,
flames burst out over half of Germany. Luther finally tried to stop the
revolt, but it continued anyway for another year in Austria. There was a
terrific loss of property and life and the reformation, itself, was almost lost
in this war, because in spite of Luther, the nobles associated this class revolt
with the reformation movement. The revolt was finally extinguished by
slaughters and massacres, but by 1527 the Lutheran "heresy" had become
orthodox in half of Germany. Economic factors (there was now no money
going to Italy) and the pressure of the Turks, which kept the emperor and
his troops busy, allowed the Reformation to succeed. In 1531 the two
religious forces, one represented by the Catholic League and the other by
the Protestant Schmalkaldic League, had many conferences but made little
progress in conciliation. From this time on the princes and nobles, rather
than the theologicans, were the Protestant leaders, for the issues concerned
property and power far more than dogma and ritual. (Ref. 51)

The true German religious war, as contrasted to the Peasants' War, began in
1546, a few months after Luther's death. The Protestant Saxon army was
badly beaten at Lochau.

By 1547 a kind of settlement was reached but in 1552 all Germany was at
war again. Charles V abdicated, giving Germany to his brother Ferdinand
and Spain and the Netherlands to his son Philip. Charles, himself, died in
1558 in a monastery where he had been living in royal splendor. The
greatness of the Holy Roman Empire died with Charles.

The religious Peace of Augsburg, negotiated by Ferdinand, marks the end
of the Reformation period. The adopted formula of 1555 recognized the
legality of the status quo - in both religious and territorial sovereignty.
Ecclesiastical officials had the right to convert to Protestantism, but they
could not secularize their property. The only real victory of the Lutherans in
this peace treaty was a legal recognition of their existence. Four factors
colored the second half of this 16th century in Germany, as recorded by
Rodes (Ref. 184):

1. The Counter-ReformationThis really began with Pope Paul III. The
final Council of Trent convened in 1562, controlled by the Jesuits and
it reaffirmed all the basic Catholic doctrine. There were no concessions
to the Protestants and the Council did not reconcile the two faiths.
Actually the Catholic Church was immensely strengthened as it then
established the "Catholic Index"

2. Disunity of the Protestants "Disunity among the Protestants became
particularly evident in the distrust and even hatred between the
established Lutheran faith and the new Reformed Sect of Calvinism
that began to spread across Germany in the 1550s."[footnote] Calvin's
predestination and his doctrine of attributing sovereignty to the
religious community rather than to the state, divided the groups. There
were many decapitations of Protestants by Protestants, as well as by
Catholics. Lutheranism began to assume primarily a defensive attitude,
while Calvinism, militant and aggressive, kept the expansive spirit
alive and completed the conversion of Holland and Scotland while also
retaining England in the Protestant camp
Quotation from Rodes (Ref. 45), page 137

3. Foreign Influences on German Affairs Most important was the
division of the Habsburg inheritance. King Philip II (Spain) was the
wealthiest and most powerful ruler of Europe and his troops frequently
interfered in Germany in behalf of Catholicism. In addition, German

princes continued their various alliances with foreign powers. The
German aristocracy rushed to adopt foreign customs and culture,
particularly French

4. Lack of Political Leadership In Germany, only one ruler stood out in
this period, Duke Maximilian I in the Duchy of Bavaria and he did not
come into power until 1597.

HUNGARY

It was a bad century for Hungary, beginning with a great revolt of the
peasants, under George Dozsa. This uprising against the aristocracy was
finally put down in a sea of blood by John Zapolya. Immediately the
Werbocz Code was proclaimed, which made the serfdom of the peasants
perpetual. A strike by Hungarian miners in 1525 and 1526 started that
industry on a downward slide. (Ref. 292)

The Turks, under Suleiman, defeated and killed the Hungarian king in 1526
and overran the nation with an army of 150,000 men. There followed a
period of division of the country with a narrow western area remaining as
Royal Hungary under the Austrian Habsburg, Ferdinand, and the remainder
of the country choosing John Zapola[footnote] to reign as a puppet king
under Suleiman in one portion, while the far eastern area was directly under
Turkish rule. Later the sultan took the central portion under his rule also,
leaving only Transylvania to John Sigismund, Zapolya's heir. Under the
Turks, Hungary was devastated and the ultimate result was to give
psychological impetus to the eventual union of Hungary to Bohemia and
Austria under the Habsburg Dynasty, which was to last for 400 years. (Ref.
126, 119, 291)

Zapola was actually supported against Ferdinand by Henry VIII and
Cardinal Lord Chancellor Woolsey, in order to annoy the emperor. (Ref.
291)

The Reformation came into Hungary through German immigrants. By 1550
it seemed that all Hungary would become Protestant, but rivalry between
Lutheranism and Calvinism tore the movement in two and Catholicism
again became supreme.

CZECHOSLOVAKIA

In 1526 Emperor Charles V's brother-in-law, King Ladislas of Bohemia
(and also of Hungary), was defeated by the Turks at Mohacz and he
drowned in the Danube while trying to escape. He was succeeded by
Charles' brother, Ferdinand. In general Bohemia had weak kings in this
century, with the nobles refusing financial support to the throne. The
aristocracy as a whole, however, extended its power and peasantry sank
back into serfdom. On the religious scene we must recall that through the
Hussite movement, Bohemiawas actually Protestant even before the time of
Luther and by 1560 2/3 of the population was definitely so. In the following
year, however, the Habsburg Ferdinand introduced the Jesuits and the tide
turned back to the Catholic Creed. The accession of Archduke Ferdinand
(later emperor) began the long Austrian and Habsburg domination of
Bohemia.

SWITZERLAND

As the century opened Switzerland gained some territory from Italy south
of the Alps and fought against France, but the Swiss were finally defeated
at Marignana, in 1515. The country was still having difficulty "pulling itself
together". The Swiss were great fighters, as evidenced by their extensive
use over all of Europe as mercenary forces, but they still did not always pull
together as one nation. In 1533 Geneva, which had previously been a part of
Savoy, became independent and in 1536 Swiss armies took Vaud from
Savoy. (Ref. 8) The Alps continued to be for the most part untamed and
horses that had returned to the wild state were distributed throughout the
mountains.

This country was host to two great religious reformers, one the native
Zwingli of Zurich and the other John Calvin, born French, but active in
theology in Switzerland by 1534. Zwingli had a humanist education,
became a Catholic priest in 1506 and by 1508 was attacking the principles
of indulgences, clerical celibacy and the Mass. By 1517 he called for a
religion based entirely on the Bible, and in 1521 he proclaimed openly for
the Reformation, which was already well under way in Germany. Zwingli

differed from Luther only in believing that the Mass was entirely symbolic.
Eventually he became the head of both the new church and the city-state of
Zurich. The local contests with surrounding Catholics became actual battles
and Zwingli was killed in one of them. Five Catholic Cantons had banded
together against Zurich and the Reformation movement and the resulting
conflict greatly weakened the Swiss Confederation for the remaining part of
the century. Anabaptism arose among members of Zwingli's circle,
crystallizing as a distinct variety of Protestantism in 1525, when Conrad
Grebel and George Blaurock re-baptized their group and called themselves
"Brethren". After 20 years of persecution, the sect received its permanent
doctrine from Menno Simons. Their three fundamental principles were:

1. adult Baptism
2. separation from the world
3. literal observance of Christ's Commandments

NOTE: Insert Map 48. The Swiss Confederation 1526

Upon attaining an essentially independent status in 1533, Geneva had allied
itself with the Cantons of Fribourg and Bern and had accepted the
Reformation preached by Guillaume Farel. Calvin came there to preach in
the middle of the century, after Zwingli's death, and wrote the book The
Principles of the Christian Religion, which was modeled after Luther and
followed the ideas of Paul and St. Augustine. He put these thoughts into an
eccliastical doctrine and established the Reformed and Presbyterian
Churches, which won the allegiance of hundreds of millions of men in
Switzerland, France, Scotland, England and North America. His theology
was dismal - this life is a vale of misery and tears and it would be better to
die immediately at birth. He agreed with Zwingli on the Mass; he set rigid
moral laws; and made the church supreme again over the state. He was
hated by Luther over the single point of- doctrine about the interpretation of
the Mass. In later years, Calvin became more and more intolerant and had
Michael Servitus burned at the stake for being too liberal and humanistic.
(Ref. 51)

WESTERN EUROPE

McNeill (Ref. 139) says that Europeans of the Atlantic seaboard developed
command of all oceans of the world within a half century because of three
factors: (1) A deep-rooted pugnacity and recklessness. (2) Complex military
technology, particularly naval. (3) A population inured to a variety of
diseases long endemic in the old world. From 1560 or 1580 population in
the western world, especially in France, Spain and Italy, again became too
dense and eventually poverty ensued. (Ref. 260) Western Europe, in
general, tended to be somewhat antagonistic to the Genoese, who were the
chief "capitalists" with the most money, ready "to buy everything up". (Ref.
292) This may be analogous to more recent situations there regarding
Americans. (Ref. 292)

SPAIN

In a little more than a half century Spanish institutions and civilization were
impressed upon an area larger than the whole of Europe. The Spanish army
was the most successful of Europe, with even nobles in its ranks, carrying
handguns. Their real pride, however, was the cavalry and after 1525 they
dominated Europe until the middle of the next century. Long before that,
Spain was spending 70% of its revenue on weapons. For the infantry one
man in twelve was conscripted, but he too became a professional. (Ref.
213)

Isabelle, the great queen, died in 1504 and Ferdinand, whose natural
Machevellian tendencies had been tempered by Isabelle, died in 1516. In
that short time, however, he was totally involved in European politics,
goading Henry VIII into war with France and even talking Henry into
sending 7,000 men to San Sebastian in 1512 to drive the French from
Navarre and conquer Guienne. The attack was premature and a dismal
failure. Later, in 1518, the French advanced again, capturing the Spanish
garrison at Pamplona, a battle in which the Spanish officer Ignatius de
Loyola received a severe leg wound. During his convalescence he reformed
his life and founded the Society of Jesus, as we have previously noted. (Ref.
291) Ferdinand's grandson, Charles of Ghent, became Carlos (Charles) I of
Spain and Sicily and because the young man's other grandfather had been
Maximilian of Austria, he also became king of the Netherlands. As noted

above he later became Holy Roman Emperor as Charles V and thus ruled
Germany and Austria also. At first Charles could speak no Spanish and he
tried to bring an entire Flemish court with him to Spain. Almost
immediately after arrival he had to leave to go to Germany and he left
Cardinal Adrian of Utrecht to act as regent. In his absence the nobles rose
up against him in the Revolt of the Communeros, but this was soon
transformed into a class war of commoners against nobles, so that the latter
eventually had to support the king to save themselves.

By the time Charles returned with German troops, the rebellion had already
pretty well burned itself out and Spain became an absolute monarchy.

Charles abdicated all titles in 1556 while in Brussels and his son Philip II
took over as king of Spain. It was Philip who sent the great Spanish Armada
against England in 1588 to avenge the death of Mary of Scots and to restore
Catholicism to England, but as we shall see shortly, he failed in this
endeavor. This preoccupation with northern Europe was new to Spain,
basically a Mediterranean country, and it happened only as a result of the
dynastic accidents and manipulations of the Habsburgs. Philip II ruled more
of the earth's surface than anyone since the beginning of history, but all of
the silver from Peru and Mexico had not kept the Spanish court from
sinking ever deeper into debt, a lot of the money disappearing into the
conflicts in the Netherlands. The Spanish court repudiated its debts to the
Fuggers on 5 separate occasions between 1557 and 1627 and those bankers
progressively withdrew from financing governments. In 1580 the Spanish
cavalry, under the Duke of Alva, quickly conquered Portugal and from then
on for the rest of the century Spain and Portugal were united under a
common Iberian crown, which ruled three empires - the silver empire of
Spanish America, the spice empire of the Indian Ocean and the sugar
empire of the south Atlantic. From 1,000 to 2,000 Spaniards left Spain for
America each year during this century. (Ref. 51, 139, 8, 260)

We must add some details about Philip's war with England. Actually he
feared this, but was egged on by the pope and some of his advisors, so that
eventually he was enticed into gathering a great fleet of ships from all over
Iberia and Italy, for the purpose of holding the English fleet at bay while the
Duke of Parma led Spanish troops, which were then in Belgium, across the

channel to restore Catholicism to England. Provisioning the great fleet was
a problem never adequately solved, partly because of Spain's worsening
financial situation. A raid along the southern coast by Sir Francis Drake,
which among other insults resulted in the destruction of about 1,700 tons of
hoops and pipe staves, which had been destined to be made into casks to
carry 25,000 to 30,000 tons of water, wine, salt meat, salt fish and biscuits,
did not help matters. The substitute, green barrel staves, which the
Spaniards then had to use, made leaky and quickly fouled casks.

In late May of 1588, under a somewhat inexperienced and reluctant
Captain-General Medina Sidonia, the Spanish armada finally set off from
Lisbon. In the first line were 10 Portuguese and 10 Castillian galleons,
reinforced by 4 great, armed West India merchant- men. Then there were 4
galleasses of Naples manned by 300 soldiers and sailors, 300 rowers and 50
guns apiece. The second line had 4 squadrons of 10 large merchantmen,
each heavily armed, and attached to them were 34 light, fast ships and 23
awkward hulks acting as freighters and supply ships, making a total of 130
vessels. Included in the personnel were 180 friars and priests. The armada
carried 2,431 cannon (of which 934 were iron, instead of bronze), 7,000
arquebuses, 1,000 muskets and 123,790 bullets and shot. (Ref. 260)

The fleet was at first becalmed for several days just off the Portuguese
coast, then scattered by a storm, with the loss of 2 galleasses and 28 other
major ships, while still others were badly battered. In addition, there was
already much fever, scurvy and dysentery aboard and the green-stave casks
were already producing spoiled food and water.

Nevertheless, the battle was eventually joined at the mouth of the English
channel on July 31, 1588[footnote], with the longer range cannon of the
British ships holding the Spanish out of their gun range and preventing
grappling and boarding as the southerners were wont to do. After various
engagements in the next several days the Spanish lost several ships, some
aground and some sunk and/or exploded when the English launched a "fire-
ship" attack. By August 8th the Spanish were almost out of ammunition and
food and on August 12th the remaining ships turned tail and escaped into
the North Sea. The English did not follow, although the Spanish command
expected them to do so at any moment.

This date is that of the Gregorian calendar, already adopted by the Spanish,
but not by the English

The damaged remnants of the great armada sailed up around the north end
of the British Isles, carrying a load of sick and starving sailors. Some 17
ships are said to have sought refuge on the Irish coast and perished there.
Thousands must have drowned- and those that survived a landing were
battered to death by the Irish or turned over to English soldiers. Finally in
September, 1588 some 44 vessels straggled into the harbor at Santander,
Spain, a fleet shattered by battle, weather, sickness and starvation. On the
flagship San Martin alone, besides those killed in battle, there were 180
dead of scurvy, typhus or influenza, aggravated by hunger and thirst. More
died daily in port while the unprepared countryside people tried to gather
food and clothes and arrange hospital facilities. (Ref. 133)

In spite of that armada fiasco, Spanish merchant ships still brought
American treasure back to Spain, actually in greater quantities between
1588 and 1603 than in any other 15 year period. The defeat had not
significantly altered the command of the seas commercially. Seville was
actually prosperous as never before and 7% of the population was slave.
Black Africans, white Moriscos and Moors from Granada and North Africa
and Indians from America all could be seen in the bustling streets. (Ref.
267) The battles of the armada were the first of their kind with the massive
ships and their long range cannon, but as far as actual numbers of vessels
and men were concerned, this has been over-emphasized in many histories.
(Ref. 133)

In this century the Inquisition continued with the ecclesiastical attack on
witchcraft at its height. The Inquisition was a cause as well as an effect of
intense Catholicism in Spain and it held the Reformation to a minor
skirmish in that country. After the Jews were run out, the Moors came under
the Inquisition scrutiny and 3,000,000 of them left Spain and returned to
North Africa. In this exodus of Jews and Moors, Spain lost an incalculable
treasure and it has never made up for it intellectually and other ways.
Thereafter, knowing only one religion, people submitted completely to their
clergy and surrendered the right to think except within the limits of the
traditional faith. Spain chose to remain medieval, with little intellectual

activity. (Ref. 51) One bright light was to be found in the Navarrese, Miguel
Serveto, who discovered that blood was pumped to the lungs by the arteries.
But, as mentioned in a paragraph above, he was then burned alive in
Geneva for some alleged religious eccentricities in letters he wrote to
Calvin. The imprint of the Catholic king's world-wide empire can be noted
in the general acceptance all over Europe at that time of the black, solemn,
short capes and high collars with a small ruff. (Ref. 213, 260)

The potato[footnote] was brought to Spain from Peru about 1565. The
peninsula continued to raise tremendous numbers of sheep, exporting wool
to Holland, Germany and Italy.

Regarding the smallness of this potato, see Section VIH, C, SOUTH
AMERICA, this chapter

Very important in this industry was the Mesta, a guild of sheep owners,
which arranged the movement of the herds of sheep from summer pastures
in the north to winter quarters in the south, preventing landowners from
fencing across the routes, ensuring the marking of the sheep, fixing the
resting places and helping with the- marketing. By 1526 there were
3,400,000 sheep moving each year some 200 to 300 miles up and down
Spain, averaging 5 miles a day. The crown protected the Mesta and this
centralization prevented the birth of anything like a free-enterprise system
and blocked progress in Spain. It is even probable that the Mesta more or
less forced the Spanish kings to expel both the Moors and the Jews, because
the latter groups were more concerned with farming crops than with
livestock. In spite of sheep and potatoes, the years 1599 and 1600 were
years of famine and plague, which decimated Andalusia and Castile. (Ref.
8, 213) The government finances did not help the overall situation. By 1600
40% of the government's income went for servicing old debts. (Ref. 279)
International capitalism had successfully captured the opportunity which
the discovery of America had given Spain. There was a three-tier pyramid:
the base consisted of peasants, shepherds, silk-producers, artisans and
peddlers; above them were the capitalists of Castile, who controlled those
local people; and finally, running everything from above, were the agents of
the Fuggers and soon of the Genoese. (Ref. 292)

PORTUGAL

This was a golden age for Portugal, as the Age of Imperialism began with
the development of an extensive empire. In addition to Brazil, the
Portuguese had established a colony with a governor in India and had set up
commercial relations with China. In 1509 they won a decisive battle with
the Moslems for control of the Arabian Sea, off the Indian port of Diu. They
had heavy ships with cannon and the Moslems were short of metal and
under armed. As a result of all this, Portugal had virtually taken over the
spice trade from the Venetians. In 1523 alone, some 100 tons of ginger and
2,000 tons of pepper had gone into Germany from Lisbon. By the middle of
the century the Portuguese had a string of more than 50 forts and factories
from Sofola on the east African coast to Nagasaki, Japan. (Ref. 211, 8)
Strangely enough the Portuguese merchantmen carried no artillery, even
though French privateers on the Atlantic possessed it. The Portuguese
carracks were the giants of the seas, however, with a displacement of up to
2,000 tons[footnote] and carrying up to 800 persons. (Ref. 260)

This "displacement tonnage" is an entirely different measurement of ship
size than the carrying capacity tonnage we have mentioned in the note on
page 742 as pertaining to the number of "tuns" of wine in the hold

At home, the Avis Dynasty continued with Manoel I the Great ruling until
1521, then Joao III, followed by Sebastian I (1557-78). The latter undertook
a new religious war against the Moors and was killed in the process, ending
the dynasty. The Avis had been good rulers and their empire had had good
administrators so that Lisbon had become a center of wealth, luxury and a
depository for Asiatic goods. The only cloud on the horizon had resulted
from Manoel's borrowing from Genoese bankers to equip his Asian-bound
ships. Interest on these debts and agents’ dishonesty cut heavily into the
trade profits and the kings did not do as well as others around them. (Ref.
275)

As the century progressed black slavery, imperial war, corruption at home
and other features began to lay the groundwork for decline. An earthquake,
which killed 30,000 people in Lisbon in 1531 did not help matters.
Following the lead of Spain, Portugal expelled her Jews and soon the
Inquisition entered with consequences similar to those in Spain. In the
dynastic struggle which followed the end of the Avis Dynasty, the Spanish,

under the Duke of Alva, invaded Portugal and defeated a Portuguese
contingent in the battle of Alcantara in 1580, near Lisbon, thus allowing the
Spanish king, Philip I, to also become the Portuguese monarch, at least in
theory. English, Dutch and French forces then began to attack the
Portuguese overseas colonies. (Ref. 119, 229, 222)

FRANCE

Louis XII died in 1515 without heirs and the Valois, Francois I, became
king and entered in the intrigues of a complicated Europe. Within 8 months
he had invaded Italy and defeated a seasoned Swiss mercenary army of the
pope near Milan. Venice, still antagonistic to Emperor Maximilian,
supported Francois’ armies. (Ref. 291) These "Italian Wars" were actually
the start of nearly 60 years of warfare of France with Spain, ending in the
Peace of Cateau-Cambresis, in 1559. Since Spain was ruled by Charles V,
after 1540 Francois entered negotiations that were designed as a three-
pronged attack against the Habsburgs, whom he felt to be his greatest
antagonist. The triad attack included: (1) Subsidies to German Protestants
so that they could attack Charles V from the north. (2) Alliance with the
Turks to attack Austria from the east. (3) Launching a campaign with the
French army from the west.

The Holy Roman Empire did decline but this was certainly not in any way
the result of Francois' manipulations. Actually the French king was held as
a prisoner in Madrid by Charles for about a year (1525) and his children
were held as hostages much longer. (Ref. 292) It is also true that Francois
was so busy with women that he had very little time for administration. He
lived lavishly to the extent that he impoverished his people. His sister
Marguerite and his mother Louise d'Angouleme of Savoy were very
influential in his government and the former was very tolerant religiously,
protecting many Protestants as the Reformation began to arrive in France.
In 1536 Francois I did occupy the Duchy of Savoy, but by the Peace of
Cateau-Cambresis Duke Emmanuel Philibert re-obtained the Duchy,
excepting that portion which had been taken by the Swiss.

(Ref. 68)

The Reformation was somewhat delayed in this country because of a
"concordant" with the pope, allowing the king to appoint and control church
officials in the nation. This removed the dominance of Rome, which was
such a great factor in Germany's revolt.

Nevertheless, by the second half of the century this did become a political
issue that led to the Wars of Religion, France's gravest civil conflict since
the Hundred Years Wat.

Wedged between conflicts were the short reigns of Francois II, first husband
of Mary Stuart of Scotland and niece of the Guises, to be mentioned below,
and Charles IX. Francois II died of tuberculous meningitis in 1560 a year
after he was crowned, while his brother Charles [X died of pulmonary
tuberculosis at age 24 years, in 1574. (Ref. 260) From 1559 to 1598 there
were 8 distinct wars, interrupted by treaties, aggravated by massacres - a
muddled, chaotic period, which showed that the French are never crueler
than when fighting one another. Huguenot Protestants, taking Calvin's
doctrines, became more and more powerful so that by 1561 there were
2,000 Calvinistic churches. This was in the reign of the "boy king", Henri
II, son of Francois II and ruling from 1549 to 1559. He was a weak
monarch, greatly influenced by Anne de Montmorency, his mistress Diane
de Poitiers[ footnote] and by Francois and Charles de Guise. Even so, in this
period some things were accomplished for France. Calais was finally re-
taken from the English and exports of grain, wines, fabrics and woolens
gave France a positive trade balance with all its neighbors except one -
Italy. Most of the money flowed out through Lyons to Italy for costly silks
and velvets, spices, marble and Italian artists' services. (Ref. 292)

Henri II later took Catherine de Medici for his wife, but retained Diane as
his mistress

Three separate factions began to develop in France: The Valois royalists of
Catholic faith, who for awhile tried to be tolerant of the new Protestantism;
the strong Catholic faction led by Henry Guise of royal blood from Anjou
and Lorraine; and finally the faction of Henri de Navarre of the House of
Bourbon and of mixed inheritance from Spanish, Basque, French and
Austrian ancestry. Henry Guise had a dual purpose in life - to kill all
Huguenots and make himself king of France. Henri de Navarre, a nominal

Protestant, also was a claimant to the throne. The destinies of these factions
were interwoven with the Spanish-English-Dutch conflict at the end of the
century, which we have indirectly mentioned when discussing the Spanish
Armada. Henri III, a Valois who had been elected king of Poland, returned
to France as king in 1574, on the death of Charles XI. He vacillated on the
religious issue and let himself in great part be dominated by his mother
Catherine de Medici and his cousin the tricky Duke of Guise, champion of
the anti-royalist conspiracy known as the "Holy League", serving the

The antagonisms of the factions just mentioned culminated in 1585 in the
last of the 8 wars and carrying the name "The War of the Three Henris".
Confusion reigned supreme as Henri III fled to Blois, hoping to get support
from the States-General and finding none, he arranged the murder of Henry
of Guise and his brother, a cardinal. In retaliation a new revolt of the
Catholic party broke out and Henri fled to the camp of Henri of Navarre
among the Huguenots, where he was murdered by the monk, Jacques
Clement. This left only the Bourbon, Henri of Navarre, but the Catholic
group refused to recognize his succession to king and named another. But
Henri besieged Paris, defeating the Duke of Mayenne and the Spanish Duke
of Parma and finally, supported by somewhat moderate Catholics who
wished a strong national monarchy, he was crowned Henri IV, King of
France.

NOTE: Insert Map 62. France During the Huguenot Wars 1562-92

He returned to the Catholic faith, but in 1598 issued the Edict of Nantes,
which gave the Huguenots equal political rights, although not complete

religious freedom. This ended the French religious-civil conflicts, often

called "The Huguenot Wars". (Ref. 139, 119)

The large amount of space we have just devoted to the national political
scene in France is not to be interpreted in a way to detract from the
continued independence of certain towns. Local citizenship was of ten
zealously guarded. In Marseilles it was necessary to have 10 years
residence, possess property and to have married a local girl before
citizenship could be granted. (Ref. 160) All through the feudal period in
Europe, there was little or no sense of "country" or of patriotism, because

each man's fidelity was given only to his immediate superior in the feudal
chain. Even the word patrie, meaning "patriotism", was not used by French
writers until this 16th century. (Ref. 218) It is of interest that amid all the
national strife, we find an early example of workers revolt against
management in the big printing strikes in Lyons in 1539 and 1572. There
were about 100 printing presses with about 1,000 workers who thought that
new technology in updated presses would result in a decrease in the number
of workers. So they beat up blacklegs, distributed leaflets and took their
master to court and formed their own society. In both strikes the workers
gained little, but their actions certainly foreshadowed modern activities.
(Ref. 292)

Only in this century did Paris become France's largest city, with 400,000
people and it was a trade center attracting job hunters and adventurers. The
all important wood for construction and burning arrived in Paris in
boatloads and giant floats, some 250 feet long and maneuvering these under
the arches of bridges took great skill. Charcoal came from the forest of Othe
via Sens. A great carrageway was constructed for the king from Paris to
Orleans. (Ref. 260) The French aptitude for high fashion was shown late in
the century when the effeminate Henri III allegedly wore 6,000 yards of
lace at the 1577 Estates General at Blois. By the end of the century the great
market, Halles, had been reconstructed and restored to old levels of
commercial activity, making a "renaissance" of a type. This must not be
taken to mean that everywhere there was prosperity, however. In 1587 some
17,000 poverty-stricken people presented themselves under the walls of
Paris. (Ref. 292) In some periods Parisian food supply was very inadequate
and some reports state that the dying people were eating dead dogs,
garbage, rats, and even children[ footnote]. There were eleven general
famines in France in this century. (Ref. 140, 222, 260)

Trager (Ref. 222) on his page 201, says that this information was found in
the diary of the lawyer, Pierre de L'Estoile

Ambroise Pare, surgeon to four kings, has been called the "Father of
Modern Surgery". In military medicine he gave up the use of the cautery
and used soothing dressings. Trained only by apprenticeship to a barber and
then a wound dresser, he revolutionized the treatment of wounds. He wrote
the treatise "A Universal Surgery" in 1561 and published his famous Ten

Books of Surgery in 1564. (Ref. 74, 125) The political decline of the Valois
royal family may have been due to syphilis, which had been brought back
by French soldiers after a military fray against Naples, in 1494. The French
army also brought typhus back from Naples during another excursion there
in 1526. In another vein, it is interesting that when Henri Valois was
besieging Paris, just prior to his becoming King Henri IV in 1590, Parisians
used carrier pigeons to keep in touch with the outside world, a custom in
use at times since the ancient Greeks. (Ref. 122)

THE NETHERLANDS AND BELGIUM

Throughout most of this century the Lowlands were a part of the Habsburg
dominion. In the first half, Antwerp, by virtue of its crucial location,
seemed to be the leading city commercially, with trade routes to Bergen,
Stockholm, Reval, Danzig and all points south down even to Seville and
Algiers. This was based greatly on a luxury trade, however, and with a shift
of the European staple market and the rapid increase of seaborne trade,
Amsterdam became the center of commerce. The sacking of Antwerp in
1576 by disgruntled Spanish soldiers, who had gone unpaid by the bankrupt
King Philip I, certainly was a factor in this transition. (Ref. 279) Soldier
and sailors, in those days, demanded gold for wages, not paper. Already in
1567, when the Duke of Alva arrived in the Netherlands with his army, the
troops' pay and expenses were invariably settled in gold and gold alone.
(Ref. 260)

The Dutch Baltic fleet brought food supplies, chiefly grains from the Baltic,
to Amsterdam and by 1500 that fleet had already equaled that of the
Hanseatic League. Their business was free of guild restrictions and the
Italian bankers, the Fuggers, and English merchants centered their
commercial activities there. The area thus provided a great source of
revenue to king and emperor, Charles V, who responded by giving the
Dutch reasonably good government except in the matter of religious liberty.
(Ref. 8) The Netherlands, along with Italy, remained the focus of European
industrial activity until very late in the century. Contrary to what one found
in a princely court, as in France, the wealthy of Holland were deliberately

modest in both dress and decorum, so they could not be identified on a city
street. (Ref. 292)

NOTE: Insert Map 61. The Netherlands War of Independence

Erasmus, a bastard born in Rotterdam, but later a "citizen of the world",
traveling, and living at times in England, France, Italy and Switzerland, was
one of the original humanists. He became a priest and soon had a number of
benefices all over western Europe, which supported him while he wrote,
chiefly in Latin and usually adroitly criticizing the Church, including the
concept of transubstantiation, as in his Praise of Folly. Somewhat
anticipating Luther, the book was condemned only after Lutherism
developed. After 1519 Lutheranism and Anabaptism came in from
Germany. The latter particularly gained ground in Holland under the
leadership of John of Leyden, with the idea of a return to the simple
teaching of Jesus and belief in the early return of Christ to earth. These
concepts were mingled with communistic theories of equality, mutual aid
and even "free love". Various Anabaptist uprisings and rebellions were put
down brutally by the emperor's soldiers and finally the Spanish Inquisition
machinery was imported to liquidate the group. The Spanish kept 50 pieces
of artillery in the Netherlands, these maintained at a monthly cost of over
40,000 ducats. To move these units required almost 5,000 horses and nearly
6,000 wagons. (Ref. 260) After publicly burning Luther's books, the Papal
Nuncio, Aleander, had Erasmus expelled from the theological faculty at the
University of Louvain, claiming that he had paved the way for Luther by
his Greek New Testament and his jibes at the Church. (Ref. 291)

In the middle of the century the Huguenots came in from France and
Charles abdicated in 1555, giving the Netherlands to his son, Philip. The
latter fought Protestantism in a bitter conflict that eventually broke the
Netherlands in two. In these conflicts, known as the 80 Years War or simply
as the Dutch Wars, starting in 1568, Philip's Spanish General Alva came
opposite William the Silent, of Orange, a great Dutch leader. The Dutch
began to win at the siege of Alkmaar in 1573 and in 1576 the "Pacification
of Ghent" directed the withdrawal of all Spanish soldiers from the country
as part of Philip's political bankruptcy settlement. However, after the
Spanish king had made peace with the Turks and annexed. Portugal he felt

that his finances would be- adequate and he renewed the war with the Dutch
in 1583, only to eventually lose again. (Ref. 279) In the next century the
Dutch were officially free. although Belgium remained under Catholic rule.

Professor William McNeill (Ref. 279) has emphasized the-very important
contributions to the European military made by Maurice of Nassau, Prince
of Orange (1567-1625), Captain-General of Holland and Zeeland after
1585. Maurice stressed three things:

1. The spade.He felt that the spade was mightier than the musket, in that
by systematically digging ditches and erecting earthen ramparts, a
besieging army could protect itself while continuing the siege

2. Systematic close order drill, including repetitive drill on loading and
firing of weapons "by the numbers". McNeill believes that this, in
itself, promotes psychological and sociological effects that solidifies
an army into a close, social, professional, responsive group

3. Division of army into smaller tactical units on down to platoons, where
a single voice could control the movements of all the men

The chief architect of the new Belgium, once separated from Holland, was
Alexander Farnese, Duke of Parma, a military genius who had led the
Spanish forces in their attempted subjugation of the Lowlands and their
frustrated attempts at crossing the English Channel under the hoped for
protection of the Spanish Armada. The Dutch had prevented any potential
landing barges from leaving the Belgium waterways, while the English
navy chased away those ships of the Spanish fleet which remained afloat.
Farnese, a grandson of Pope Paul III, was unable to conquer the northern
provinces of Holland, but retained Belgium for the Spanish crown and the
pope, in spite of the attempt by William the Silent to reconcile various
southern social groups under a national program to be carried out by the
Estates-General. (Ref. 51, 133)

At the end of the century Dutch sea power had increased to where it could
challenge Spain and Portugal and they were raiding the overseas colonies of
those powers. The defeat of the Spanish Armada and Spanish involvement
in the French civil wars allowed the Dutch to drive the Spanish from the
north and they were whittling away at the Portuguese monopoly on the
spice trade. Both Holland and Belgium benefitted from a 16th century

agricultural revolution, with efficient, commercialized farming systems
developing progressively through the next three centuries. The Dutch used-
the increased capital they obtained through trade to reclaim land from the
sea, and they developed better methods of crop rotation.

It should be mentioned that Netherlanders dominated music in this century,
with the great Flemish composers Josquin Deprez and Orlando di Lasso
greatly responsible for the development of polyphony. Perhaps this Holland
accomplishment compensates, in part, for its development of a method of
distilling spirits, which with Dutch encouragement led to an increased
drunkenness all over Europe. (Ref. 211, 8, 38, 213)

BRITISH ISLES

ENGLAND

This was a famous century in England, with the well known rulers Henry
VIII, Queens Mary and Elizabeth and the Golden Age of English literature.
The first quarter of the century was marked by an exceptional amount of
unique local and foreign intrigue, deception, double-crossing and false
conceptions. In the midst of this was one Thomas Woolsey, a priest whose
origins we mentioned in the last chapter and who had by 1501 made himself
chaplain to the Archbishop of Canterbury and was to rise to even greater
heights from there. A second important factor was the continuation of some
English territory on the continent in the marches of Calais, which had been
English since it had been conquered by Edward 150 years before. It was a
small area, 25 by 6 miles, but enough to justify the continued use of the title
"King of France" by English kings and to maintain permanent military
garrisons in Calais and Guisnes. To keep the English kings from further
attempts on French territory, the kings of France paid 25,000 francs twice a
year. Woolsey had some experience in the administration of Calais in 1503
and 1507 and was then taken into the service of King Henry VII.

In 1509 Henry VII died and his son Henry VIII became the monarch 2
months before his 18th birthday. He was a handsome, dashing young king,

who reluctantly signed execution papers for some very unpopular tax
collector-ministers of his father's regime. Even so, those tax collectors had
made Henry VIII one of the richest kings in Europe and he was not long in
taking advantage of this with elaborate banquets, tournament, jewels and
dress.

Woolsey was already Dean of Lincoln and a second rank official in the
king's government and in 1511 he was appointed a member of the Privy
Council and by 1515 was a "Cardinal Sole"[footnote] was supreme in the
Council and in a month or so was made the Lord Chancellor of England.
Like all medieval English kings, Henry VIII wanted the crown of France, in
truth, and the time seemed ripe with France headed by an old, invalid king,
Louis XII. Spain's King Ferdinand (and Henry's father-in-law) encouraged-
him and Burgundy, now under Emperor Maximilian, was also ready for war
with France. Most of all, Pope Julius feared French designs on Italy and
would look with favor on any aggression against them. Only Scotland could
be considered an ally of France.

That is, he was appointed individually, without waiting for the usual time of
election of cardinals

Preparations for large scale war were time consuming and expensive. In the
first 2 years of Henry VIII's reign his total government expenditure was
9,346 pounds but in the third year war preparations brought it up to 111,445
pounds. The whole financial arrangement, including loans from German
and Flemish bankers, was handled by Cardinal Woolsey. In order to get the
support of the English people it was publicly stated that by Easter, 1513 an
English army of 60,000 would cross to Calais, while the Emperor
Maximilian would invade France from the Netherlands, Ferdinand and his
Spaniards would march into Navarre and Guienne and the pope with his
Italian allies and Spanish armies in Naples attacked the French in Italy. But
things were delayed and it was June 30th before Henry crossed to Calais
and then heavy weather stopped everything. In the meantime James IV had
invaded England from Scotland, to be defeated at the battle the English call
"Branxton". Henry finally did manage to visit Margaret of Austria at Lille
and besiege Tournai on the border of the Netherlands with 20,000 men.
When this city fell, Woolsey was made Bishop of Tournai. But then
Ferdinand double-crossed Henry and signed a truce with Louis XII and

Maximilian's efforts were only "window dressing". Therefore, in secret,
Woolsey and Henry, instead of invading France in 1514, signed a peace
treaty at St. Germain-en-Laye, whereby Louis ceded Tournai to Henry and
agreed to paying a million francs over 10 years, while Henry's beautiful,
young sister, Mary, was to marry the aging Louis XII[footnote]. This
separate peace annoyed the emperor, King Ferdinand and Pope Leo X, who
had succeeded Julius II. The good relations between France and England
did not long exist, however, as the ambitious, young Francois I took over
the French throne.

Within two months after the marriage, Mary was a widow

Henry and Woolsey did not pursue war against the new French king but
used all diplomatic means to thwart him, including offering of financial aid
to any power who would oppose him. By the time of this "cold war" of
1515 Woolsey was bishop or archbishop of any number of communities,
with additional income internationally from various Spanish, French, and
Imperial agreements so that he was becoming very wealthy. Some
considered him "ipse rex" - the king himself. Having close ties with Venice
commercially, the English king and the cardinal soon tried to woo that
Italian city away from their French alliance, but were unsuccessful until
1523,

Undoubtedly most of us tend to associate Henry VIII only with obesity,
gluttony and beheading of enemies and wives, but actually in his younger
years he was apparently a capable, bright, ambitious but well liked man. He
was determined to make England the greatest artistic and literary center of
Europe. Among the English intellectuals was Thomas More, the lawyer that
we also mentioned in the last chapter. Initially one of the great humanists,
More soon became a close friend of Erasmus of the Netherlands, who had
made many visits to England. In addition to their humanist views they had
in common the study of Greek and both wrote copiously in Latin and
Greek. More's book Utopia[ footnote], written in Latin, developed a most
unusual hypothetical community, which has given its name as a new word
in most languages. Partly as a result of his reputation from this book and for
his success in some diplomatic activities in Flanders, he was soon invited to
join the king's government. It was thus that Henry VIII, Cardinal Woolsey

and Thomas More all eventually were joined together in the control and
manipulation of England.

The full name was The Best State of a Commonwealth and the New Island
of Utopia. "Utopia" was coined from the Greek word for "nowhere". (Ref.
291)

The extent of the pomp and ceremony of governments and royalty in the
16th century is not easily pictured today. In 1520, when Henry VIII crossed
to Calais on another trip to confer near there with Emperor Charles V, he
was accompanied by a retinue of 3,990 persons and 2,087 horses, while
1,175 persons and 778 horses accompanied his Queen Catherine[ footnote].
All of the accompanying officials had dozens of servants and/or knights,
while the Lord Legate[ footnote], the Cardinal of York, Woolsey, had 300
servants. Initially all of these individuals professed the Catholic faith and
suppressed Lutheranism, including the burning of the heretics' books and a
few of the heretics themselves. Henry, the king, even wrote a book, The
Assertion of the Seven Sacraments[footnote]. No subject in Europe could
even approach the power, wealth and status of Thomas Woolsey. He lived at
Hampton Court with its 280 rooms and a staff of 500 servants, although this
was only one of several of his palaces. It was this man who was involved in
the unscrupulous diplomatic maneuvers which pushed Charles V and
Francois I into a major, western European war-which raged, with only brief
intervals, for nearly 40 years at a time when Christendom was threatened
internally by Lutheran heresy and externally by the Turks in Hungary.
Through the first 25 years of the century, Woolsey kept promising the
emperor and the Spanish that he would invade and conquer France, but this
never actually materialized in any degree and at the same time Woolsey
kept up secret negotiations with France. In this period there were several
papal deaths and each time Woolsey tried to conjure, buy or blackmail
himself into the papacy, but he always failed. Henry's only living offspring,
his daughter Mary, was used in much international bargaining and intrigue -
at one time offered to Charles V in marriage and other times to Francois I of
France. While supporting the church, Cardinal Woolsey at the same time
managed to get papal dispensation to confiscate any number of monasteries
and nunneries to use the proceeds for constructions of 2 colleges of his
founding| footnote]

Catherine of Aragon was the daughter of King Ferdinand and Queen
Isabella

By this time Cardinal Woolsey was also the Papal Legate to England
Although the authorship of this has been debated in the past, it is now pretty
generally acknowledged that the king did write it. (Ref. 291)

One of these persists today at Oxford as Christ Church

In the meantime, after 1517 Thomas More underwent a profound
intellectual and emotional transformation. His appointment to the Privy
Council changed him from the humanist writer of Utopia to an instrument
of Henry VIII's tyranny and the rise of Lutheranism in Europe turned him
from an intellectual into a religious fanatic. Becoming a great persecutor of
heretics, it seemed that he inwardly felt his original humanism was
responsible for Lutheranism. He constantly wore a hair shirt beneath his
outer clothing and regularly flogged himself with a knotted rope.

Finally in August of 1525, peace was agreed upon with France, the latter
ceding no territory but agreeing to pay an enormous indemnity. England
then changed sides in the struggle between France and the empire. Allied
with the former, Henry could think of nullifying his 15 year marriage to
Catherine (who had given him no male heir), since her nephew, Emperor
Charles, was then the current enemy. The Lord Chancellor Woolsey spent
the next many, many months trying to get the pope to accommodate Henry
in this regard and Henry, himself, had already fallen in love with the young
Ann Boleyn. No one knows exactly why Lord Woolsey fell from power,
although there were many factors from which to choose - his failure to get
the annulment or divorce for Henry from Catherine, the loss of public
support because of the opulence of his life and immense wealth and a
multitude of small offences and irregularities collected by- the king's
secretaries over a 15 year period. At any rate, he was arrested on the charge
of "praemunire", a grave offense just short of treason and punishable by life
imprisonment. The charge was based on Woolsey's exercise of powers as
Papal Legate, in which, as a representative of a foreign potentate he had
usurped some of the king's powers. He was replaced as Lord Chancellor by
Thomas More. Woolsey soon fell ill and for the first time in his life showed
an interest in the spiritual side of religion. Although losing most of his
estates and most of his wealth, he was essentially pardoned by the king and

simply banished to York. It is interesting to note that even in that
predicament he traveled there with 600 gentlemen and servants and 12 carts
carrying baggage. But he was arrested once again in 1530 and on his way to
the Tower of London he died, apparently of intestinal hemorrhage, cause
unknown.

The new Lord Chancellor spent all his efforts persecuting heretics. In his
mind every ill in the world was caused by Luther - even the terrible sacking
of Rome by the emperor's troops. As King Henry gradually became more
and more infuriated with the pope, More alone remained in favor of
Catholic policy. Parliament convened in 1529 to stay in session for nearly
seven years, during which time it placed the church under royal authority,
repudiating the Papal Supremacy and recognized Henry as the Supreme
Head of the Church of England. More's objections to this eventually caused
him to lose his head. (Ref. 292) It was in 1531 that Henry assumed
ecclesiastical leadership of the church and made Thomas Cromwell the
chief administrator. The latter, in turn, sought to make the king supreme
over every aspect of English life and was ruthless in his persecution of
those attempting to remain Catholic. In spite of this, he too ended up
beheaded. Between 1535 and 1547 all monasteries were dissolved by Henry
and the spoils were distributed to minor nobles or business men who
supported the king. The government did protect industry with tariffs and the
manufacturers profited from cheap labor, so that the textile industry grew
and made wealthy men, some of whom then became the new aristocracy of
England. With the destruction of the monasteries, however, education
almost disappeared and strangely enough, mead also disappeared. The
monks of the monasteries had raised bees to get wax for votive candles and
the mead had been made incidentally from the honey. The people of
England were still surrounded by sheep, but now many only wanted cow
dairy products. Their entire agricultural process was changing in the
beginning of an agricultural revolution, with the development of the iron
plow and soil liming, among other things. (Ref. 57, 229, 211, 8)
Technicians imported from the continent discovered in 1543 how to cast
satisfactory iron cannon, thus cheapening the big guns to about one-twelfth
their former cost. (Ref. 279)

But to return to Henry VIII, the reckless and vicious elimination of his
various wives have been the source of many books, dramas and histories
and will only be tabulated here for record. Catharine of Aragon, mother of
Mary the Catholic, was finally divorced after 20 years. Anne Boleyn,
mother of Elizabeth, was beheaded. Jane Seymour, mother of Edward VI,
died apparently of natural causes. Of the last three, Anne of Cleves was
divorced and Catherine Howard was beheaded while Catherine Parr
outlived the king. (Ref. 119) In the last of his reign Henry was the most
absolute monarch England had known. His late, terrible disposition may
have been in part fashioned by his syphilis and a chronic leg ulcer. Upon his
death in 1547 his son by Jane Seymour became Edward VI, when he was
but ten years old, and he never did gain the strength to rule. The power of
the throne was contested by Edward Seymour, Duke of Somerset and his
brother, Thomas Seymour. The former was ruined by Kit's Rebellion, a
Catholic peasant revolt, as the duke sympathized with the losing peasants
against the nobles.

When Edward VI died in 1553 followers of his half-sisters Mary and
Elizabeth battled to put one of them on the throne. Mary, a nervously ill,
unattractive woman, whose only solace was her Catholic faith, became the
queen. In the meantime Archbishop Cranmer had written the First Book of
Common Prayer as a substitute for the missal and breviary of the defeated
church. Although at first tolerant, Mary soon had him burned at the stake.
The papal legate was brought back and persecutions of Protestants resulted
in the name "Bloody Mary" for the queen. In the end the people were more
ready than before to accept the "new" or Protestant faith. Mary married
Philip, destined later to be Philip II of Spain, but never having been
crowned by Parliament, he returned to Spain not long before Mary died.

Elizabeth became queen in 1558, restoring Protestantism. Royal agents then
tortured Catholic priests; non-attendance at some English Protestant Church
cost 12 pence a Sunday in 1559 and by the 1580s reached 20 pounds a
month. (Ref. 119, 51, 133) It was actually Elizabeth who signed the treaty
of Cateau-Cambresis in 1559, officially dividing the spoils of the 60 year
French-Spanish war, in which England had been intermittently involved.
(Ref. 292)

In the last half of the century foreign trade began to be an important part of
the English economy for the first time and in the last quarter, there was a
great overseas expansion, first with piracy and then world-wide trade. The
Merchant Adventurers was a wool and cloth, closed corporation which
actually operated primarily outside of England in Antwerp and later
Hamburg. Joint stock companies including the Moscovy Company (1555),
the Levant Company (1581) and the English East India Company
developed. (Ref. 292) Sir Francis Drake, the most unscrupulous of the
English pirates, left England in 1577 to sail through the Strait of Magellan
and enter the Pacific, there harassing every Spanish ship, ransacking cities
of Chile and Peru and finally sailing up past San Francisco and then across
to the Moluccas and Java. He arrived home with great loot, to be made a
hero, and gave hope to English farmers and shepherds who were resenting
feudal taxes and tithes. That trip really stimulated the colony experiments of
the next century. Drake was also one of the chief admirals at the time of the
Spanish Armada, when the English fleet drove off the Catholic ships, which
had been sent to facilitate a channel crossing of Spanish troops from
Belgium. (See pages 780-782). The backbone of the potent English navy
included 18 powerful galleons, varying from 300 tons up, excellently
armed; 7 smaller galleons of 100 tons or more; and a great number of
pinnaces. While awaiting the great battle, the crews were kept healthy on
land, with fresh food and good water, not going to sea until absolutely
necessary. (Ref. 133, 39) After the remnants of the defeated Spanish fleet
sailed away in the North Sea, the English kept expecting a renewed attack
and kept their ships manned and vigilant. As a result, typhus fever then
killed the English sailors in greater number than had the battles.

A former junior officer of Drake's, Admiral Sir Richard Hawkins, later also
raided about the Atlantic and around the southern end of South America,
eventually to be taken prisoner by the Spanish. He had reported that 10,000
men under his command had died of scurvy and that orange and lemon
juice were anti-scorbutic, but his home admiralty did not accept this for
another century or more. (Ref. 222) It is said that Sir Walter Raleigh
brought the potato to England from South America in 1588 and this
probably had greater effects on the future of Europe and mankind than the
sea battles with the Armada. (Ref. 260)

There is evidence that between 1/2 and 2/3 of all English households
received some part of their income from wages. All through this century
the-Tudors depended upon unpaid justices of the peace, always land
owners, to apply the laws. Failure to retain support of these land owners
could result in revolts and one such uprising did occur against Elizabeth I in
1569-70 called the "Northern Rising". But overall, the last of the century
was tranquil and an age of many exceptionally brilliant writers, including
Shakespeare, Spenser and Ben Jonson. In 1599 London merchants were so
upset over the rise in pepper from 37 cents to $1.00 per pound (these figures
are the American equivalents) that they formed the East Indian Company to
get their own pepper and thereby unwittingly started the British Indian
Empire. (Ref. 8, 211)

SCOTLAND

At the end of the last century James IV had promoted the founding of
Aberdeen University with the first medical school teaching in Britain and in
1506 he granted a royal charter to a College of Surgeons in Edinborough.
After the king's marriage to Margaret Tudor, daughter of Henry VII of
England, border peace was obtained at least for while and government,
justice and order were improved. Scotland then had a powerful navy and the
largest and most modern cannon. After England's Henry VII died in 1509,
English border raids resumed and when Louis XII of France pleaded for
Scottish aid in his war against the Holy League and the pope, James first
moved to the English border with an army of perhaps 20,000 men to meet
an English force of about the same size. King James and some 10,000 Scots
were killed.

Scotland then again had a child king, James V, less than two years old and
who should have had his mother, Margaret Tudor, as regent. She was so for
a few months, but when she married Archibald Douglas, the 6th earl of
Angus, Scottish lords and Parliament, loyal to France, appointed John
Stewart, Duke of Albany, to be regent. He was a grandson of James II,
shrewd and intelligent and spoke nothing but French, having lived in France
since the age of four. The factions of Angus, Albany and the queen mother
all struggled for control and finally in 1526 Angus seized the king and kept

him in confinement. John Stewart returned to France, where he was held for
four years while Scotland again fell into violent anarchy, with lord against
lord and clan against clan. Some semblance of order was restored after 1528
by the 16 year old king, who emerged in some way from his captivity. He
obtained some money from the pope and a good deal more from Francois as
a dowry for marrying his unattractive daughter. The lady obligingly died
within two months and James V then married Mary of Guise, a French
widow. She brought a dowry of 150,000 livres. In spite of the king's attempt
to promote law and order, great brutalities, fights and noble murders
continued. In 1542 an English army again attacked Scotland; the Scots,
failing to get French help, were not enthusiastic for the conflict; they lost
and James V was killed, leaving an infant daughter who was to become
Mary, Queen of Scots. (Ref. 38, 170)

In the middle of the century young scholars who had been educated in
Germany and Scandinavia returned home, rejecting the Church of Rome.
Among these was George Wishart, a zealous dogmatist and religious
politician. Eventually he preached to large congregations, sometimes
protected by an ecclesiastical notary, John Knox, carrying a great two-
handed sword. With a charge of heresy, Wishart was strangled and then
burned in 1546. Knox took up his reforms and preaching and was one of a
band that killed Cardinal Beaton. After a long sojourn in Switzerland,
where he had been strongly influenced by the Calvinists, Knox got a
reformation parliament to repudiate the supremacy of the pope, forbid the
celebration of the Latin mass and approve a Confession of Faith. He stated
that soon the English would send an army to help. Instead came a French
fleet, which took Knox prisoner for 8 years, during which time he was a
galley slave. When he was finally released, he returned as a noisy rabble-
rouser, advocating war and murder, drunk with a self -righteous passion and
responsible for much of the blood and bigotry that was to follow. He
glorified the Old Testament, claimed prophetic powers, rebelled against
women rulers and felt that all should be killed who did not hold his beliefs.

Meanwhile war erupted again in 1548 when the Duke of Somerset took an
army into Scotland, ravaging the countryside with the announced purpose
of arranging a future marriage for the little Queen Mary with the Prince of
Wales. The Scots resisted, with the help of the French army which came

with a promise of Mary's betrothal to the dauphin of France. When the
English withdrew in 1549, the French army stayed for another 8 years to
protect Catholicism and finally the queen did marry the French heir, while
she still ruled Scotland from France, under the regency of her mother, Mary
of Guise. The new Protestantism was tolerated for awhile, but in 1559 the
queen mother decided to crush the new faith. In 1561 the real queen of
Scots came home from France, a widow at 18 years of age, tall, beautiful,
Catholic and claiming not only the Scots but the English throne as well,
thus becoming a thorn in the life of her cousin, Elizabeth. Either through a
French variation or actual misspelling, her surname became changed from
Stewart to Stuart. In 1656 she married again, this time to 19 year old Lord
Darnley, a great grand- child of Henry VII. Not long after fathering Mary's
child, the future James VI, the young groom was strangled. Subsequently
the queen was made a captive for a year but ended up marrying her captor,
the Earl of Bothwell. Captured again by Protestants she was held in
Edinbrough, called a whore and declared ripe for a burning. Forced to
abdicate her throne, she named the Earl of Moray as regent for her small
son while she escaped into England. Freedom was short-lived, however, as
the Elizabethan court imprisoned her again and eventually executed her in
1587.

In the meantime John Knox had died in 1572 and his place at the head of
the Protestant movement in Scotland had been taken by Andrew Melville,
who came from exile in Geneva to be principal of Glasgow University. An
unbelievably strict, rigid Protestant morality doctrine descended on the
Scottish people. In keeping with Scotland's long history of treachery and
deceit and violence, the young King James VI was abducted in 1582 and
confined for about a year. Subsequently he did rule for the remainder of the
century, marrying a Danish princess and arranging to be the successor of
Queen Elizabeth on the throne of England in the next century. (Ref. 170,
291)

IRELAND

When Henry VIII had completed his separation from the Roman Church in
England he bade the Irish Parliament to acknowledge him also as head of

the Irish Church. It accommodated him and the spoils of the monasteries
and church properties were given to various Irish chieftains who thereupon
became nobles of the English king. The clan system was abolished and
Ireland was declared a kingdom, with Henry VIII as its king, in 1541. But
when the king died, five years later, the Irish people remained Catholic, a
factor which bolstered them in their later struggle for freedom. Irish rebels,
including Red Hugh O'Donnell and Hugh O'Neill continued to fight for
Irish independence, and the O'Neill badly defeated an English army at
Yellow Ford in 1598. Spain even dispatched 4,000 troops to aid in this
rebellion, landing at Kinsdale on the southern coast, but they were
immediately evicted by English troops. In this century Ireland became a
major ex- porter of salted butter and salt beef, the latter being used on
shipboard and as food for the poor and the slaves. Salt beef even became a
standard winter dish in England. (Ref. 110, 260)

WALES

There had been peace between England and Wales since the ascension of
the Welsh Tydder (Tudor) King Henry VII and in 1536 Wales became
officially incorporated into the English nation.

SCANDINAVIA

"The Baltic is a vast, almost land-locked, frequently ice-bound area of water
covering over 166,000 square miles. In early modern times it provided the
great bulk of the timber, tar, pitch, hemp and flax for the ships with which
England, Holland, France, Spain and Portugal were building their world
trading empires; also much of the grain needed to insure the rest of the
continent against poor harvests, and the copper for its everyday money."
[footnote] Furthermore, the Baltic and the adjacent Gulf of Finland were
almost completely under the control of Scandinavians during the 16th
century. In the first quarter, all Scandinavia was, furthermore, under one
king, in the Union of Calmar. Finland was a part of Sweden and all were
subservient to King Hans (Dane) as the century opened. After Hans' defeat
by the Frisians in 1500 the various segments of Scandinavia gradually

began to separate again. At the end of the century all Scandinavia was still
relatively sparsely settled, with only about 1.5 inhabitants to the square
kilometer (compared to 40 in the Netherlands, for example) and remained
only on the margin of European life. (Ref. 260)

This quotation taken from The Times Atlas of World History (Ref. 8), page
188

NORWAY

Norway continued the docile partner of Denmark throughout the remainder
of the century. The country did become an exporter of copper to Europe
proper. (Ref. 292)

SWEDEN (See map in section on SWEDEN in 17th century)

In 1501, after King Hans had been defeated in -Frisia, the Union of Calmar
was not officially dissolved, but it was simply "not in force" and Sten Sture
was again considered Regent of Sweden. When Sten threw the Archbishop
of Sweden into prison in 1520, Christian II, successor to Hans, took an
army to Sweden and the Danish army, backed by some Swedish nobles,
took the whole country by force. In Stortorv Square in Stockholm, after a
celebration, Christian II had his soldiers murder 82 nobles of Sweden as
heretics. A son of one of those so killed in this "Stockholm Bloodbath"
soon thereafter got help from the peasants to assemble an army and within
two years had all of Sweden under his control. This man, Gustavus
Eriksson, was then crowned King of Sweden as Gustav Vasa, in 1523 and
the Union of Calmar truly ended. During his reign a financial crisis
developed and when the pope replied to the king's appeal for funds only in a
very meager way, the king began to favor the Protestants. He commissioned
a translation of the Bible into Swedish and this helped not only to transform
the national religion but to promote the language itself. As in England, the
king began to take over church property for his treasury and insisted that the
Diet, or National Assembly, cut out the pope, eliminate confessions and
give all the church property to the crown. This was another triumph of the
state over the church. Gustav I Vasa was the father of modern Sweden.

During his reign iron mines were expanded, trade increased. copper
exported and soon there was great prosperity. Even the peasants
manufactured iron, but only during the rise of the spring waters when water
power was available to help in the operation of the furnaces. (Ref. 260)
With all of this, we must not lose sight of the fact that the vast expanses of
Sweden were still half-empty, with only a few settlements in a vast territory.
Traveling merchants distributed horse shoes, nails, pins and religious books,
among other things. (Ref. 292)

In 1544 the crown's status was changed from elective office to an hereditary
monarchy so that Vasa's sons succeeded him, Eric XIV (1560-68) and John
ITI (1568-92). During this period Reval, a previously independent Hanseatic
port, now threatened on all sides put itself under Swedish protection, but by
1563 the entire area burst out in the Seven Years' War of the North. Sweden
generally held pretty well in this struggle, although she had to pay ransom
to Denmark for the return of Alvsborg and by 1581 she was becoming a
significant factor far beyond the Baltic. John III married a Polish princess
and his son ascended the Polish throne in 1587 as Sigismund III only to also
become King of Sweden upon his father's death in 1592. He was deposed
from the latter job, however, in 1599 with his Lutheran uncle taking the
crown as Karl (Charles) IX. In the meantime, at the final settlement of the
Seven Years' War of the North, in the Peace of Teusina, Sweden added
Narva and almost all of the country of Estonia. The Gulf of Finland thus
was a Swedish waterway. (Ref. 34, 237, 222)

DENMARK (Please read the remarks about Sweden, above, also)

Although Denmark's Christian II lost Sweden, he had a constructive reign
within his own country. The Reformation movement there was led by the
monk Poul Helgeson and was approved by Christian. Certain nobles and
clergy rebelled, however, dethroned the king, made Frederick of Schleswig-
Holstein monarch for while, but finally, after much fighting for the throne,
in 1536 the National Assembly crowned Christian III, established a
Lutheran State Church and confiscated all episcopal and monastic
properties for the king. Norway and Iceland accepted Christian III and his
Protestant legislation and the triumph of Lutheranism in Scandinavia was

complete. Later in the century King Frederick II attacked Sweden and their
then King Eric XIV and this war went on again as the Seven Years' War of
the North.

Tycho Brahe (1546-1601), the famous astronomer of this period, was given
an island in the sound off Denmark for his home and laboratory. About
1600 Denmark exported some 100,000 cattle each year through Lubeck and
Hamburg. (Ref. 117, 260)

FINLAND

Finland, as a part of Sweden, was given the Lutheran faith by Gustavus I
Vasa. 79% of Finns today are still, at least nominally Lutherans. Helsingfors
(Helsinki) was founded in 1554. (Ref. 292)

OVERSEAS SCANDINAVIAN CENTERS

The Norwegian settlement of Iceland in this 1 6th century took the brunt of
what has been referred to as the "Little Ice Age", with Atlantic ice sheets
extending well south of that island, interrupting shipping and destroying the
Icelanders agricultural base in Greenland. In Iceland proper, the previous
wheat-based economy gave way to sheep and cattle and life became very
hard. Between 1500 and 1800 there were 37 years of famine in that country.
Very important to Iceland is the physical fact that a mean annual
temperature drop of only two degrees Fahrenheit reduces the growing
season by 40 days or 25% and the drop in the average temperature during
the growing days further reduces the crop. (Ref. 237)

EASTERN EUROPE

For centuries there had been a correlation between traffic on the Baltic Sea
and prosperity of Eastern Europe. After 1581, when Russia lost Narva in
Estonia, as noted elsewhere, Moscovy diverted its trade to overland routes

and the Baltic trade diminished, only to be refurbished when the Thirty
Years War cut the land traffic through Central Europe. Perhaps in
connection with the above, huge areas from the Baltic to the Black Sea
reverted to a "second serfdom"|footnote]. The peasant was being ever more
firmly attached to the land and he was losing mobility and the right to free
himself. Gradually through the century, the days of compulsory labor were
increased in Poland, Hungary, Livonia and Moscovy. The need for food and
raw materials to be shipped to the West and the decline of cities and rise of
feudal lords all played a part in this. (Ref. 292)

The term is Braudel's (Ref. 292), page 265

SOUTHERN BALTIC AREA

As in the past, Sweden, Denmark, Russia and Poland all competed in this
century for domination of the Baltic area. Of the original Balt tribes, the
Letts had now become Latvians and the Curonians were Lettonized in this
century. The Prussians were extinct as a people, but the Lithuanians
remained strong and numerous. Until the middle of the century the Teutonic
Knights held Livonia, Estonia and Courland and their stories thereafter will
be taken up in a later paragraph. After somewhat of a poor start in the
century, with the loss of the left bank of the Dnieper in 1503 and the city of
Smolensk in 1514, both in wars with Russia, Poland-then enjoyed a Golden
Age under Sigismund I and II, up to 1572. Both rulers were men of culture
and spirit and gave religious thought and worship a complete freedom.
Although there were interval wars with other powers for control of the
Baltic, Poland prospered and remained a major European state. The power
of the lesser nobility continued to grow, however, and all efforts of the
kings to strengthen royal power, reform the government and establish a
more modern army and administration met with failure and Poland
gradually became transformed into a republic. Lithuania and Poland
continued to be closely associated and the kings of Poland were usually also
the Grand Dukes of Lithuania. As was true all across northern Europe, beer
was consumed in large amounts - the peasants drinking three liters a day.
(Ref. 260)

The Livonian War began in 1557 and was an armed dispute involving all
the powers bordering the Baltic. As the Russians moved in from the east,
Sweden took Estonia and the Danes acquired part of Courland. In 1561
Poland took part of Livonia and insisted on the Polish language and laws
and the Catholic religion, but within two years Ivan the Terrible of Russia
had re-conquered this area. Russia and Sweden continued the battles until
1582 with Narva falling to the latter in 1581, but the Pole's fighting had
pretty well ceased by 1571, probably due to their preoccupation with their
relationship with

Lithuania. In spite of opposition by the Lithuanian common people,
Lithuania officially merged with Poland in 1569. Subsequently the two
nations had a common sovereign and a common Diet, although Lithuania
retained some separate administration and army. Russian threats to
Lithuania were probably the deciding factors in forcing this union, because
Russia had already taken the Ukraine territory, including Kiev. By the
Polish union, Lithuania apparently was able to save White Russia from
Ivan. (Ref. 135, 61)

The Reformation filtered in to Poland from Germany and Switzerland and
both Lutheranism and Calvinism advanced rapidly, with the National Diet
in 1552 voting religious freedom for all faiths, based on "The pure Word of
God", legalizing clerical marriage and communion in bread and wine. The
Unitarian movement, denying the Trinity, also became strong. But in 1564
the Catholics brought in the Jesuits and these trained and devoted men
secured strategic places in the educational system and turned the Polish
people back to Catholicism. In 1595 even most of the Orthodox bishops of
the Ukraine and Lithuania had also accepted union with Rome on condition
that they retain a Slavonic ritual. Thus, the "Uniate" Church came into
existence. (Ref. 51)

One of the important products of Poland was lead and by this century the
mines were producing between 1,000 and 3,000 tons a year. But money was
necessary to construct the long, sloping tunnels and the horse powered
pumps necessary to drain water of the depths and this brought in those who
had capital. Thus 1/5 - of the mines fell to King Sigismund Augustus, 1/5 to
the nobility and related people and 3/5 to the merchants of Cracow. (Ref.

292) Poland exported some 50,000 head of cattle to Central Europe each
year. (Ref. 260)

For 2 years after the death of Sigismund II and the end of the Jagellon
Dynasty, Henri of Valois was the elected king, subject to the new pact
which gave the nobility the right to limit the royal power. In 1574 Henri
went back to France, however, and finally the Poles elected Stephen
Bathory, whose wife was a Jagellon. He ruled well from the standpoint of
foreign affairs and war, dominating the Baltic until 1586, as he held the
Russians in check. He was followed on the throne by Sigismund III, son of
King John of Sweden, an ardent Catholic educated by the Jesuits. He
squandered all of Poland's energy in wars with Sweden because of his
claims to the Swedish throne. (Ref. 119)

RUSSIA (Please see map in section on RUSSIA in 19th century C.E.)

The search for a Baltic outlet was a critical issue throughout this century.
Ivan III died in 1505 and Basil III assumed power. In 1511 Pskov
succumbed to the fate of Novgorod and was incorporated into the state of
Moscow and by 1514 there was war with Poland. Even at this early date
Moscow and the Habsburgs of Vienna had discussed a possible partition of
Poland, but the latter was too strong a military power. In the war just
mentioned, Russia used foreign officers and up to date artillery and did
capture Smolensk from the Poles.

The Orthodox Church had developed a schism: (1) Abbot Joseph Volotsky
held that the state was under obligation to preserve the sanctity and purity
of Jesus. (2) Abbot Nil Sorsky held that the faith was not to be enforced by
police measures and the state had no authority in spiritual affairs. Joseph
said monasteries should own property, Nil said "no". Joseph was for high
ritual and temples, Nil said the heart was more important than the temple.
Basil III divorced his first, barren wife and took another with Joseph's
blessings and Nil's condemnation. Thus, Basil sided with the Josephians
and they became the victors, loyally serving the state. (Ref. 135)

Ivan IV, son of Basil, became the Russian sovereign in 1533. The Tatars
still held Kazan, Astrakhan and the Crimea, but there was now reduced
nomadic pressure so Ivan attacked and after a long siege he not only won
but then massacred the people of Kazan. This eastern expedition gave
Muscovy control of two vital rivers, the Kama and the Volga, opening the
way to the Caspian Sea and trade with Persia beyond. (Ref. 260) The
Cossacks of the Don (but not those of Kiev, now under Lithuania) now also
bowed to Moscow's rule.

Ivan's next project was to try to gain access to the Baltic through Livonia
and it was this that precipitated the 25 year Livonian War involving
Sweden, Denmark and Poland as well as the Livonians, themselves. He did
temporarily get a window on the Baltic at Narva in 1558 but it was closed
to him again in 1581. Furthermore, trouble then developed at home, with
plots, counter-plots, defection of key people to Poland, etc, so that Ivan had
to start a revolution of his own. First he engineered a terrible purge of the
nobility whom he thought might be against him, endeavoring to elevate a
new Class to political power. Actually the Orthodox Church remained the
real ruler of Russia. Ivan was a barbarian struggling to be civilized, but
failing. He gave his people a demoralizing example of pious cruelty and
uncontrolled passion and well earned the name of "Ivan the Terrible".

One of the few constructive aspects of this reign may have been the church
Council of Stoglav in which many reforms were instituted by the counsellor
Sylvester, who later compiled a book for instruction of the people in
morality and general education.

The Crimean Tatars had been only temporarily controlled and in 1571 they
again sacked and burned Moscow. At that time they were vassals of the
Ottoman Turks, but their only duty to the Turks was to bring the Khan some
20,000 to 30,000 horsemen, when summoned. The Poles under Stephen
Bathory invaded Russia also in 1579, regaining much border territory in
Livonia, although they could not retake Smolensk. It was the Swedes who
took Narva in 1581, cutting off Russia again from the Baltic. In 1584 the
Cossacks invaded a Siberian Khanate and opened up the eastward
movement which was comparable to the later westward migration of the
American colonists. (Ref. 139, 8, 260)

Italians, Germans, Dutchmen and Englishmen penetrated Russia in this 16th
century and one of the crucial issues was how to cope with these

Europeans, much as it is today. With the arrival of German coins and ingots
money began to be minted regularly, although still on a modest scale. (Ref.
260) A second big problem was control of the lower classes. In 1592 the
Moscow government ordered the registration of all peasants and 5 years
later decreed that any peasants who deserted could be returned to their
former lawful masters, marking the initial steps toward curbing of peasant
freedom, with the bulk of Russia's population turned into serfs. (Ref. 135,
213)

Ivan the Terrible killed his ablest son and bequeathed the throne to a
weakling whose incapacity invited civil war. The actual control of the
government fell to Nikita Romanov and when he died, by his brother-in-law
Boris Godunov, with the latter being elected to the throne by the National
Assembly in 1598. Although a novice in politics, Godunov's military record
was an outstanding one. In the meantime, the Russian Church had become
entirely independent from Constantinople, as the first Patriarch of Moscow
was created in 1589. (Ref. 135)

North of the Ural Mountains the Eurasian Nenets herded reindeer and
hunted seals and whales in the Arctic Ocean. Prosperous herders of ten had
two or more wives, who busied themselves setting up conical tents and
dressing skins. In this and the next century, gun-bearing European settlers
and hunters killed enough reindeer to start a decline in the number of the
wild herds. (Ref. 288)

Forward to Europe: A.D. 1601 to 1700

Europe: A.D. 1601 to 1700

Europe

In the early century, inflation was such that prices were four times what
they had been between 1525 and 1550. (Ref. 213) Three great powers
contested for dominance — the Ottoman Empire, the Spanish Empire, and
France, under Louis XIV and Richelieu. Each had a mass of about 17
million people. (Ref. 260) In spite of the presence of these great
monarchies, there were still areas all over Europe from southern Italy to
Scandinavia and from Scotland to Auvergne where primitive social
enclaves persisted, with hundreds of dialects and local, semibarbaric,
religious cults. Attempted control of these numerous pockets sapped the
resources of the great powers, similar to the drain on the Roman Empire
when it was ringed with barbarians. In addition, after about 1620 the entire
continent suffered from food shortages as the population increased to about
118 million by 1648 and the result of this was often political instability.
Even by 1640, rebellion was everywhere. Although this is often called the
century of scientific revolution, this was completely irrelevant to the mass
of Europeans as they squandered most of their energies in massive wars.
During the whole of the period there were only seven years of peace in
Europe. All of the people tended to revolt against the powers of princes and
kings over their bodies and properties and to protest against taxation,
interference with trade and arbitrary imprisonment. Over most of Europe
the peasantry represented vast numbers of people and in one way or another
they were almost always in revolt, with occasional open rebellion, as in
Naples in 1647. In Orleans, out of an active population of almost 120,000
there were over 67,000 wage earners, but this did not signal great
productivity. Many districts were over-populated with great numbers of
unemployed. Vagrants were universally put under lock and key, usually in
work-houses. (Ref. 292)

The last quarter of the century saw the establishment of responsible
parliamentary government in most areas. By 1700 the old north-south trade
axis had swung almost 90~ and ran east-west from England-Holland to
Saxony, Bohemia and Silesia. Population growth at the end of the century
had been slowed not only by war and famine but also by plague, so that

shortly after the turn of the century (1713) the population had dropped to
about 102 million. (Ref. 68, 147, 8, 131) Still, Europe remained in a favored
position when compared to other civilization, particularly in regard to food.
Europeans consumed great quantities of meat. Water-mills supplied the
chief energy and were owned and supplied by the lord of the manor, while
the peasants contributed their labor. The mill, which ground grain, was thus
the essential tool of the manorial economy. Otherwise the 17th century
civilization was one of wood and charcoal. Buildings, machines, wine-
presses, plows and pumps were all made of wood, with a very minimum of
metallic parts. Fortunately Europe was well-endowed with forests. Iron,
although available, was still in short supply. (Ref. 260) Wigs and then
powdered wigs came into fashion in this century despite initial objection by
the church.

Practically all the armies of Europe had adopted the military reforms
initiated at the end of the previous century by Maurice of Holland. (See
page 792). This resulted in obedient, responsive units of soldiers able to
function efficiently in any part of the globe. The new drill and techniques
spread from officers trained at Maurice's Military Academy, which was
founded in 1619, first to Sweden, then to the northern Protestant European
states and finally to France and eventually Spain. (Ref. 279) (Continue on
page 942)

SOUTHERN EUROPE

EASTERN MEDITERRANEAN ISLANDS

Continuing their take-over of Mediterranean islands, the Turks conquered
the Cyclades and all of Crete except two off-shore Venetian forts. The
Hospital of the Knights of Malta became a kind of teaching institution,
treating patients from all over Christendorr. In 1653 Louis XIV of France
gave the Knights four Caribbean islands, but they soon sold them to the
French West India Co. (Ref. 38, 86) (Continue on page 944)

GREECE AND UPPER BALKANS

Greece and most of the Balkans were under Ottoman rule although several
Christian communities had survived and there was some degree of local
autonomy by the prelates of Greek and Serbian churches. Many of the men
of those western Christian Balkans fought as mercenaries, either for Venice
or Constantinople. The Turks helped Istran (Stephen) Bocskay drive the
Austrians out of Transylvania in 1605 and by the Austro Turkish Treaty of
Zsitva-Torok, this area was left to his control. (See also HUNGARY, this
chapter). (Ref. 222, 279)

Commercial agriculture became increasingly important with cotton,
tobacco, wheat and maize produced by entrepreneurs, a feature which led to
the diminution of military land-holding. After 1638 there was no more
recruiting of Christian boys for Ottoman administration and the army and
this, in turn, meant a widening gap between Christian and Moslem, landlord
and peasant, village and town. Eventually this shift in relationships
destroyed the Ottoman polity. (Ref. 139) Travel in the Balkans could be
precarious and in open country travelers deployed their carriages in a circle
at night, with everyone ready for defense, just as in the American west,
centuries later. (Ref. 260)

The great Venetian Admiral Francesco Morosini captured the Peloponnesus
and laid siege to Athens in 1687. One of his shells hit a powder magazine
which the Turks had stored in the Parthenon and it blew up, reducing the
structure to its present state. (Ref. 131) The City of Senj of Croatia was the
home of the Christian, Uskok pirates and Venice had to make war against
them from 1613 on in order to protect its trade and its coastal regions such
as Cattaro, Corfu and Levkas. We have noted above that near the end of the
century Albanians became the grand viziers of Turkey. (Ref. 8) (Continue
on page 946)

ITALY

Italy continued in an age of invasion with the monarchs of Europe and petty
Italian princes fighting over its territory. Most of the old ruling families of
the city-states were dying out and Italy had little history of its own in this

century. Even Venice fell into some decline and only in its war with Turkey
was there some vestige of its earlier glory. The wealthy class of that city-
state now abandoned trade and put all its resources into farming. Still,
thanks to foreign shipping, Venice remained a very busy port. It was the rise
of agricultural prices that drove Venetian capital to the land. (Ref. 292)
Genoa lost its island of Corsica and for reasons still debatable, its credit
collapsed. Braudel (Ref. 292) believes that it had to do with a change in the
discount rate of bills of exchange. A bill had to acquire value as it went
from country to country, or someone lost all. The plague obviously did not
help. The Black Death killed a million people in north Italy between 1628
and 1631 and in Genoa there were perhaps 700 rich nobles left out of about
80,000 inhabitants. In Venice there were only 14 or 15 wealthy patricians
lef t who were capable of holding high state positions. Florence barely
existed, being little more than the Grand Duke's court. He had seized
everything - money, the right to govern and distribute honors. (Ref. 260) In
spite of all these troubles in Italy, active Jewish colonies survived for many
years in Piedmont, Venice, Mantua and Ferrara. Jews even launched
Leghorn on a prosperous new career in this century. (Ref. 292)

One of Italy's great men, Galileo Galilei, astronomer, experimental physicist
and mathematician was throttled by the Inquisition, still being promoted by
the Church. The outstanding anatomist of the age was Marcello Malpighi,
born at Bologna and teacher of medicine there for 25 years. His descriptions
of capillaries, Malpighian tufts and corpuscles are only a few of his
multitude of important anatomical discoveries. (Ref. 222, 53, 125, 213)

The island of Sicily remained rooted to the past, pretty well untouched by
the machinations of politics and commercialization seen in the market
society of most of Europe. (Ref. 292) (Continue on page 947)

CENTRAL EUROPE

Most of central Europe was still a part of the Holy Roman Empire, which,
however, consisted of several more or less separate parts. First there was a
loosely bound union of almost completely independent German states,
seven in number, each ruled by an "Elector" and nominally subject to the

Habsburg emperor, who was routinely elected by those Electors. The
Protestants of the north gave no support militarily, unless the emperor paid
for it. Secondly, there was the true Habsburg Empire, which consisted of the
Archduchy of Austria, the Kingdom of Bohemia-Moravia, Silesia, the
Kingdom of Hungary and other Balkan territories conquered from the
Turks. The Habsburgs also had claims to the throne of Spain with all its
possessions in Europe. (Ref. 131) But from 1618 to 1648 the terrible Thirty
Years War raged, disrupting the entire continent. This was basically a war of
mercenary soldiers, and in lieu of pay they lived on the country, with
resulting robbery, pillage and outrage. Neither side won, but hostilities
finally stopped with the Treaty of Westphalia. The trouble started in the
previous century when Ferdinand took over the German and Austrian half
of Charles V's Habsburg Empire. The northern German barons protested
against that Catholic ruler, and the conflagration started as a civil conflict of
Protestant, northern Germany against Catholic, southern areas. It very soon
became complicated, however, by the intervention of various other
domestic and foreign elements. Some feel that foreign interference and
pressures on the German princes actually precipitated the conflict. It had
some similarities to the civil war in England and the War of the Fronde in
France, in that in each case the crown was Catholic and the recalcitrant
nobles tended to be Protestants. It is to be re-emphasized that the Thirty
Years War was brutal and destructive, involving a semi-guerrilla force,
which plundered, raped and killed wantonly. It was a series of bloody
campaigns in which civilians often suffered more than soldiers. The
following material, giving more of the actual details of this war, has been
taken chiefly from Roden (Ref. 184), unless otherwise indicated. (Continue
on page 948)

THE THIRTY YEARS WAR

UNDERLYING CAUSES

To some this was primarily a religious war in defense of one of the three
faiths involved. The Calvinists fought for recognition as co-equals with
Lutheranism and Catholicism. For most rulers it was a political struggle; for

the Habsburgs it was a struggle to retain some measure of control over the
various political-units in Germany and to keep some semblance of empire.
It was also a civil war among jealous territorial princes and a dynastic
struggle among ruling families such as the Wittelbachs in Bavaria. It was a
predatory war fought by mercenary generals for fame, power and booty.
Finally, it was an international war for territorial and economic gains,
including efforts of Dutch, - Spaniards, Swedes, Bohemians and French.

STAGES OF THE WAR (Named for Habsburg opponents in each period)

BOHEMIAN PHASE

Frederick V of the Palatinate became a Calvinist Bohemian king and fought
Habsburg Ferdinand II, but he got poor support and lasted only one winter.
Ferdinand occupied and completely subdued all of Bohemia, outlawed the
Czech language and replaced the elective kingship by the hereditary rule of
the Habsburgs. The remarkable achievements of the Bohemian Baron von
Wallenstein during the war years are detailed in subsequent paragraphs and
the CZECHOSLOVAKIA section of this chapter.

DANISH PHASE

Christian IV of Denmark responded to Franco-English pressure and invaded
lower Saxony, but was eventually defeated by both General Tilly and
General Wallenstein, of the Catholic imperialist forces. In fact, by 1630
imperial and Catholic power had reached its greatest mark and the German
princes, Catholic and Protestant alike, began to worry about their own rights
and powers.

SWEDISH PHASE

After Sweden's Gustavus Adolphus finished his Polish War, in which he
obtained the Lithuanian coast and bases in Prussia, he swung around and

into Germany, probably for both religious and territorial reasons. After
defeating Tilly near Leipzig, Gustavus, who spoke fluent German (learned
from his mother), became a German hero and Protestant forces flocked to
his side. The Swedes moved far into south Germany and even occupied
Munich. In 1632, in a battle with Wallenstein, now restored to power again
by the Habsburgs, Gustavus Adolphus was killed while leading his
victorious forces. Swedish power was at once dimmed by the disappearance
of this forceful king-general and his minister, Oxenstierna, could not carry
the field much longer. Furthermore, after Wallenstein was murdered by
some of his own sub-generals, the Catholic forces again became more
active and forced the Swedes out of southern Germany. Then Saxony made
a separate peace with Errperor Ferdinand III, in the Peace of Prague (1635).
The terms again gave much power to the emperor, and although accepted
unwillingly by most of the German princes, France could not acquiesce in
this increase in imperial power.

Map taken from Reference 97

FRENCH PHASE

So, in 1635 France declared war on Spain and Austria, and began full scale
war in the Pyrenees, in the north against the Spanish Netherlands and in the
east against Spanish and Austrian possessions in Germany. In the long run
Swedish-French power prevailed almost everywhere and Germany was
thoroughly exhausted. Debates about peace drug on in Westphalia for 4
years while armies continued to fight, with the final peace concluded in
1648.

THE PEACE OF WESTPHALIA

The war left the basic Habsburg Empire intact but destitute. Only the
territorial lords seemed to get a clear-cut victory. Prussia emerged as a
strong state and Bavaria gained territory and retained the Upper Palatinate.
While most German cities were ruined, Hamburg actually prospered by
taking over the previous function of Antwerp as a center of refuge for all

exiles, after the latter city had fallen to the Spaniards. (Ref. 213) No
religious freedom remained in the Habsburg hereditary lands. France and
Spain remained at war for another 11 years after the treaty, but France,
along with Sweden, reaped the most important benefits. Toul, Metz and
Verdun were all given to France, along with other valuable cities and
territories in Alsace which gave a bridgehead whereby France could move
forces into Germany at will. Sweden got western Pomerania, Stettin and
many harbors, keeping good control over northern Germany. Holland and
the Swiss Cantons were permanently free.

Following the Treaty of Westphalia the histories of Germany and Austria
definitely diverge, with various German states remaining definitely
independent, although soon to be dominated by Prussia. The Habsburgs
confined their interests and power to the soon to be formed Austrio-
Hungarian Empire. The war had cut the population of Germany from
20,000,000 to 13,500,000 and there was a dearth of men. At the Congress
of Franconia in Nuremberg in 1650 a resolution was adopted that every man
should be allowed two wives and every male should be so reminded from
the pulpits. Taxes were imposed upon unmarried women. By 1700 equality
of the sexes had been restored and there were again 20,000,000 Germans.

The many Jews in Germany led a precarious existence in this century. In
Frankfort in 1614 a Christian crowd forced entry into a ghetto and after a
night of plunder and destruction, compelled 1,380 Jews to leave the city. In
general the higher classes of people and clergy were tolerant, but the lower
clergy and masses were easily stirred to a frenzy of hate. After the Thirty
Years War persecution lessened and the Jewish settlements expanded
rapidly.

The second half of the 17th century after the Treaty of Westphalia presents
an entirely new picture in Central Europe and we shall now examine that
situation in more detail.

GERMANY

Although still divided into many separate states, overall the peasants of
Germany occupied a middle ground between the serfs of the east and the
freer life to the west. Their slow emancipation was an important reason for
the slow appearance of the industrial revolution in Germany. The food
situation was helped greatly as the potato, yielding 4 times as much
carbohydrate per acre as wheat, reached even eastern Germany in this
century. (Ref. 8) Drunkenness became a universal German characteristic,
perhaps fueled by various strong spirits developed by the Dutch. (Ref. 270)
The Fuggers had gone bankrupt in 1627; the Hanseatic League, with their
trade taken over by Holland, was dissolved in 1669. (Ref. 8) Since prior to
that wage-earners had begun to make up at least 50% of the Hanseatic town
populations, this probably meant considerable change in life styles. (Ref.
292) German intellectual power could not be denied. Gottfred Wilhelm
Leibniz, man of the world, intimate with statesmen and courts, accepting
both Protestantism and Catholicism, writing 50 treatises and embracing
God and the world with desperate optimism, was the great philosopher of
Central Europe, living and working at various times in Leipsig, Jena,
Altdorf, Mainz and finally Berlin, where he was the first president of the
Berlin Scientific Society. He published an infinitesimal calculus in 1684, 3
years before Newton's similar work. (Ref. 52, 38) (Continue on page 948)

It may help to clarify the rather confusing situation in Germany if we
discuss some of the more important divisions, separately.

BRANDENBURG - PRUSSIA

After 1618 these two states were united by marriage of two branches of
Hohenzollerns and were under the same ruler. This was the third largest
state in Germany, behind only Bavaria and Saxony in size. (Ref. 8) During
the Thirty Years War the area had been devastated by the Swedes, but the
accession of Frederick William Hohenzollern, the Great Elector, in 1640,
led to an astonishingly rapid recovery in economy, prestige and power. He
organized a central government with a civil service, a postal system and a
graduated income tax, along with improved roads and a canal system which
permitted the growth of Berlin. Because the state was in the path of the
Swedish armies in another of their attempts to conquer Poland (First

Northern War of 1655-1660), Frederick was inevitably drawn in, but in the
end he did gain full sovereignty over East Prussia. In 1680 his warships
even defeated the Spanish navy off the Portuguese coast and by 1688 he
had a modern standing army of 30,000 men to protect his 1,000,000 people.
(Ref. 131)

The success of Frederick's administrative system started Prussia on a path
of more absolute monarchy, while Holland and England were moving
toward decentralization of government. For many years the Prussian
monarch was intermittently at war with France and/or Sweden, sometimes
with and sometimes against other German states and the empire, but finally
affecting a rapproachment with Louis XIV, joining Saxony, Bavaria and
some other states already getting subsidies from France. Frederick broke
with that country only after the French king had revoked the Edict of
Nantes, in 1685, resuming the persecution of the Huguenots. 15,000 to
20,000 of the latter went to settle in Prussian cities and became influential
in cultural life then and for centuries to come.

The Great Elector's pretentious son, Frederick III, took over Prussia in
1688. His constructive efforts were few and concerned entirely with cultural
advancements - establishing an Academy of Arts in 1696 and the University
of Halle in 1694, which soon became a center for the emancipation of
German culture from foreign influence. But the enormous sums he spent on
beautifying Berlin, importing architects, painters, etc. almost bankrupted his
state. (Ref. 184) In 1700 Berlin had 25,000 Protestant, frugal, efficient
people and Prussia was spread all over the northern European plain from
the Rhine at Holland to the Neman, some 500 miles east, but cut off from
the sea, with poor soil and no natural re- sources. (Ref. 131) (Continue on
page 949)

BAVARIA

Duke Maxmilian I ruled through the Thirty Years War as an absolutist, with
full support of the Catholic Church, actually gaining some territory at the
final peace treaty. During the succeeding reign of the next Elector,
Maximilian IT Immanuel, Bavaria became one of the focal points of

European intrigue, chiefly because of involvement in the War of the
Spanish Succession of 1700. Bavaria's treasury was subsidized by-the
French.

(Continue on page 951)

SAXONY

Saxony quickly regained its importance after the terrible Thirty Years War
and Leipzig became a center for book trade, newspapers and journals.
Dresden's Art Gallery was one of the best in the north. But Saxony's
Elector, Frederick Augustus I, accepted the elective crown of Poland in
1697 and the unnatural tie-up of Saxony and Poland eventually led to the
downfall of both. We shall hear much more of this under the discussion of
POLAND later in this chapter. (Continue on page 952)

LESSER GERMAN STATES

Palatinate, Hanover, Wurttemberg, Baden, Hesse and Mecklenburg
remained as other important states in this period, in which overall there
were some 300 separate principalities. One of the most basic discoveries of
the age was made by the Jesuit, Athanius Kircher of Fulda, Hesse, when he
initiated the use of the microscope in diagnosing disease and found the
"worms" in the blood of plague victims and realized their significance.

(Continue on page 953)

AUSTRIA

To regress for a moment, the learned Emperor Rudolf II ruled the
Habsburgs domains from the last quarter of the 16th century on into this
17th. As the new century began he lost Hungary, Moravia and Austria to his
brother Matthias and when Rudolf died in 1612, Matthias became emperor,

living just long enough to see the beginning of the Thirty Years War. He
was succeeded by Ferdinand II.

Austria was a Catholic world with a heavy Jesuit influence. The center of
the empire was the Hofburg palace in Vienna, a structure not elegant like
Versailles, but with a court of 2,000 noblemen and 30,000 servants. The
Habsburg monarchy had emerged from the Treaty of Westphalia with only
minor losses of territory such as Alsace, but the Holy Roman Empire, as
such, had disintegrated. Ferdinand III, emperor at the end of the war, and
the next four emperors, were all skilled musicians and composers. There
was continued hostility from France and from the Turks who surged-up on
Austria's eastern frontier 300,000 strong in 1683, just after Vienna had been
hit by a plague which killed 100,000 people. France supported the Turks at
that time and Vienna was surrounded on three sides, with even women
manning some of the defenses and the people on the point of starvation. At
the lowest ebb, Jan Sobieski, the Polish king, marched through the Vienna
Woods with 50,000 Poles and Austrians and put the Turks to rout. At that
point Leopold I, a typical Habsburg with a swarthy complexion and a
projecting lower jaw, which was almost disfiguring, was emperor. Although
almost always at war he was not a warrior and preferred theology, arts, the
study of genealogy and similar pursuits. The basis of his policy was that the
throne and empire had been fixed on the Habsburgs by God, but in actuality
his real power came from the sword of Prince Eugene of Savoy, a frail man
born in Paris and rejected by the French army, and who had turned to
Leopold to become general of the cavalry at age 26 and commander of the
Imperial Army of Hungary at 34. It was he who finally crushed the Sultan's
main forces, 3 times larger than his own, at Zenta in September of 1697.
This led to the Peace of Karlowitz in 1699 which gave all Hungary, with the
exception of Croatia, to the Habsburg Empire. (Ref. 131)

In this century Salzburg was a separate territory and was not even involved

in the Thirty Years War. A University was established there in 1623.
(Continue on page 954)

HUNGARY

As the century opened Hungary was still a partitioned country and a
battered one. Besides Turkish atrocities, the Habsburg administration began
to take land from the estates in eastern Hungary and forced a counter-
reformation against the Protestants. Istvan (Stephen) Bocskay revolted
against the Austrians with an army of wild soldier-herdsmen and drove the
emperor 's General Basta out. Bocskay became the prince of an enlarged
Transylvania and by the Treaty of Vienna of 1606, the Protestants were
declared equal to the Catholics. In the same year a new treaty with the
Ottoman Porte cancelled all tribute to the sultan, although the territories
remained as before. There were then no Turkish aggressive moves for a half
century. In 1608 the State Assembly had proclaimed the perpetual serfdom
of peasants, and later a group of these called "Haiduks" took to the hills and
lived by marauding and pillaging the Turks. (Ref. 126, 292)

A successor prince of Transylvania, Gabriel Bethlen (also Bethlen Gabor),
developed mines, industry, and foreign trade and promoted education. He
and his successor, Rakoczi I (1630-1644) were able to hold off the
Habsburgs. The power and status of Transylvania ended, however, when the
Turks made another great excursion and installed once again an Ottoman
prince over that area. The Hungarians appealed to Leopold I in Vienna for
help but he was fighting France and was also reluctant to offend the sultan
and gave only token help. Hungary went into a decline and soon the Turks
Swept across to the walls of Vienna. As described above in the section on
AUSTRIA, the tide soon turned and the Turks were beaten back across the
Danube. As noted previously too, the Peace of Karlowitz in 1699 gave all
of Hungary with the exception of Croatia, back to the Habsburgs. The
Hungarian Diet fixed the succession of the ruler of Hungary in the male line
of the Habsburgs, so that thereafter there was truly an Austro-Hungarian
Empire. (Ref. 126)

An interesting side-light relative to the long, intermittent Christian-Turkish
wars in Hungary had to do with the basic prerequisites of battle. Just as
modern warfare would grind to a halt without gasoline and related
substances, so the 16th and 17th century warfare was inconceivable without
barley (or oats) for the cavalry. "No barley, no war."[footnote] At about the
same time Hungarian cattle breeders found that they could obtain great

profits exporting cattle to western Europe, so they stopped cultivating their
arable land and bought grain rather than producing it. (Ref. 292)
Quotation from Braudel (Ref. 260), page 110

(Continue on page 954)

CZECHOSLOVAKIA

Moravia was a margraviate and Bohemia a kingdom, both under the
domination of the Habsburg family, although a Calvinist king was elected in
Bohemia in 1618. One of the triggers that initiated the Thirty Years War
was a rebellion in Bohemia in that year against heavy taxes which had been
levied on all Protestants by Emperor Ferdinand as a measure to bring the
country back to Catholicism and Habsburg obedience. The rebellion was
put down over a period of 3 years of war by the emperor with troops and
money from Spain, German Catholics and the Pope. Thereafter only the
Catholic religion was permitted in both Bohemia and Moravia. (Ref. 8)
During that war a petty Bohemian nobleman,

Albrecht von Wallenstein, made soldiering into a vast speculative business.
Although nominally only a contractor for the emperor, in effect he was
almost a sovereign himself, because of the size of military forces which he
commanded and supplied by taxation, outright plunder and massive,
complex market transactions. In the latter, he cooperated with a Flemish
businessman named Hans De Witte. Both were untouched by religious
fervor or business scruples, but they developed an army of exceptional
efficiency, numbering over 50,000 at its peak. Wallenstein's assassination
was arranged by some of his enemies in the emperor's court in 1634. (Ref.
279)

Late in the Thirty Years War Bohemia was invaded again, this time by
Swedes under Gustavus Adolphus. Ferdinand II bore the brunt of the
fighting, but even then the Swedes penetrated through until they were
actually in sight of Vienna. Then their long supply lines began to fail and
they withdrew. But Bohemia was ruined, with only 6,000 villages out of an
original 35,000 considered habitable. The population fell from 2,000,000 to

700,000. (Ref. 213) The lower classes of Bohemia along with the city-states
of Germany were subordinated to princely power based on control by
standing, professional armies. (Ref. 279) Recovery began, somewhat, at the
end of the century when, along with Saxony, the Bohemian woolen and
linen industries began to even outdo the old English and Flemish markets.
(Ref. 8) (Continue on page 954)

SWITZERLAND

The long antagonism of the buffer state of Savoy and Switzerland flared
again as the Savoyards attacked Geneva in 1602. The attack was frustrated,
but it resulted in a reaffirmation of alliance between the whole Swiss
Confederation and France, although the Catholic cantons also retained their
alliance with Spain. (Ref. 119) Officially the Swiss remained neutral in the
Thirty Years War but they were involved some on their border at the
Valtelline Pass, the most important link between Habsburg Austria and their
Spanish possessions in Italy. In 1625 the pass was seized by a Swiss force
in French pay, but in 1637 pastor George Jenatsch, originally a Protestant
from Zurich, turned Catholic, secured Austrian aid and drove out the
French. By treaty of 1639 the passes were left open to the use of Spanish
troops. The chief occupation of the Swiss in the last half of the century was
fighting, but usually as mercenaries. Tens of thousands of their men hired
out in this way, particularly in France. Some of the Swiss cities, particularly
Basle, became important relay stations for intercontinental traffic where
overland vehicular freight, the Rhine and mule trains from the mountains
came together. Some of the large transport firms made their headquarters in
Switzerland. (Ref. 292) (Continue on page 956)

WESTERN EUROPE

All of the Atlantic coast nations had overseas empires, but the rise of
French and British enterprise was made possible by smooth cooperation
between business capital and government administrations. In contrast to
Spain's constant constraints of the market and confiscatory taxation of

private capital, the northern nations set taxation limits and allowed total
wealth, private and public, to expand. (Ref. 279) (Continue on page 958)

SPAIN

The Habsburgs had convinced the Castilian nobility that the Spanish, as the
strongest, most orthodox and "purest" people in Europe, should police
Germany and the Netherlands, control France and invade
England[footnote]. In these imperial enterprises, the Spanish manpower and
the American gold and silver were squandered. Spain became a mere
channel for its colonies' silver as it quickly went into the purses of other
nations. (Ref. 260)

This was after the ascension of the heretic Queen Elizabeth

There was further enfeeblement by the Inquisition and by decline of
Spanish industries because of high taxes. The only profitable enterprises
seemed to be the making of cheap brandy, production of some cotton and
some iron works, particularly in the Basque area where every village
seemed to have a forge. Smelting was done with charcoal, which exhausted
the forests. Overall, however, it was a period of industrial, commercial and
financial failures, along with inadequate government, military defeats and
some eleven general famines during the century. (Ref. 260)

In the 1620s and 1630s a powerful Dutch West India Company cut the
Spanish shipping lines and stopped the flow of silver from America and
thus indirectly allowed French and English settlements in the Caribbean.
(Ref. 8) The wool industry was gradually lost to German wool and imported
cotton. By 1630 there was violence and revolt. The situation was certainly
not helped by terrible epidemics of plague between 1647 and 1654 in which
half the population of Seville died. In Galacia the Church and other land
owners tried to draw in the land leases (see page 623) and the tenants were
thrown into long, legal struggles.

Some migrated to America, Portugal and Madrid. (Ref. 213) War with
France, which began as an offshoot of the Thirty Years War, continued on
for 12 years after the Treaty of Wesphalia but finally ended in 1659 with the

Peace of the Pyrenees, after which Spain was pushed back behind the
Pyrenees for good and began sinking down to the level of a secondary
power. Even so Spain did add to her overseas empire with the addition of
the Philippine Islands.

There is little doubt but what religious issues played a great part in the
decline of Spain. Besides the terrible effects of the Inquisition, Philip III's
deep religious devotion was a great factor in that as he personally
developed 9,000 monasteries he put 1/3 of the entire population in the
church service and he left the government entirely to the Duke of Lerma.
Intrigue, corruption and decline followed. By 1700 the male line of the
Spanish Habsburgs died out. Leopold of Austria had trained his younger
son, Karl, to be King of Spain, but due to the early death of the older
brother Joseph, who was the Austrian-line successor, Karl had to take over
Austria instead of Spain. The resulting vacuum resulted in the War of the
Spanish Succession, starting in 1700 and carrying on into the next century.

A few other remarks about Spain in this period seem indicated. Velasquez
was a fine painter in that country. A feature often little noticed was the great
influx of French into the Iberian peninsula. Artisans, odd job men, retailers,
masons, builders as well as peasant farmers came from France apparently
because of over-population there. As many as 200,000 Frenchmen may
have been in Spain by 1669. (Ref. 260) (Continue on page 958)

PORTUGAL

Portuguese power and prosperity continued to decline under the Spanish
rule which had begun in 1580. By 1640, however, a revolt organized by a
Professor Ribeiro, supported by the nobility and the clergy and financed
some by France, then at war with Spain, succeeded and the Duke of
Braganza became the Portuguese leader. After the country became officially
independent by the Treaty of Lisbon in 1668, the Duke became King Joao
IV. There followed 28 years of war with Spain to defend that independence.
Later, while Pedro II was king, gold fields were discovered in Brazil and
after 1697 the Portuguese court was one of the most lavish in Europe, and
no local money was needed for support. Multiple aqueducts brought water

from the mountains to Portuguese cities throughout this century. (Ref. 260)
(Continue on page 960)

FRANCE (The Century of Louis XIV, the Sun-King)

After the assassination of Henri IV in 1610, civil and religious war again
erupted, not to end until 1624 when Armand Jean du Plessis, duc de
Richelieu (he had been made Cardinal in 1622) took over the reigns of
government, as Louis XIII remained chiefly a figure-head. The king died in
1643 of intestinal tuberculosis. (Ref. 260) Although not a good financial
administrator, for better or worse Richelieu increased the power of the royal
bureaucracy at the expense of the nobles and Huguenots. His greatest
achievements, however, were in foreign affairs, as he restored French
influence in Italy, the Netherlands, Germany and Sweden. His work actually
laid the foundation for the later power of Louis XIV, all of this occurring in
spite of droughts, locust plagues and intermittent famines. (Ref. 260)

France's participation in the Thirty Years War was chiefly as an ally of
Sweden, first with subsidies and later with troops who fought the Bavarians.
Along with the Swedes they ravaged Bavaria on their second invasion in
1648, just before the Treaty of Westphalia in which France received
absolute sovereignty over Metz, Toul, Verdun and Upper and Lower Alsace,
although some of those cities retained their membership in the Habsburg
Empire. The French monarchy gradually became the greatest and most
consolidated power in Europe. One reason for this domination was
manpower, as France had 20,000,000 people in 1660 while Spain and
England each had but 5,000,000 and Italy 6,000,000. The Holy Roman
Empire had 21,000,000 but it was an empire in name only and was
impoverished by the Thirty Years War. Although the French had cannon,
they were not very effective. They developed a flintlock rifle by 1630, but it
was accurate only up to 100 yards and until the end of the century the steel-
headed pike on a wooden shaft was still the main infantry weapon. (Ref.
213)

Another reason for French supremacy is to be found in the calibre of its
chief ministers. Guilio Mazarini, born in Sicily, sent as papal nuncio to

Paris, caught the eye of Richelieu and after he had been made a cardinal
(even though he had never been ordained a priest) in 1641, he followed
Richelieu as chief minister under the name of Jules Mazarin, in 1642. He
was the guiding hand at the Treaty of Westphalia. He served the Queen
Mother well (Louis XIV was but 5 years old when he came to the throne)
and perhaps was her lover. Even the king was only 1/4 French, being 1/2
Spanish from Aragon, Basque and Castilian lines (with possibly some
Jewish and Moorish blood in the back-ground) by his mother Anne of
Austria and 1/4 Italian by his grandmother, Marie de Medici. (Ref. 147) He
was only 5' 5" tall, but robust, a good horseman and dancer, a skillful
jouster and could turn a woman's head. (Ref. 53) He was basically a country
person, loving the outdoors and his mind was not as good as his manners.
He reigned from 1643 to 1715. Early in his rule some discontented nobles
formed a resistance league, the "Fronde", which eventually came to open
rebellion resulting in disruption of the Paris government and civil war in
1652. The nobles were conclusively defeated by the Crown and were tamed
at the price of escaping taxations so that thereafter the economic burdens of
the throne were thrown entirely on the lower classes. It was in this civil war,
chiefly a war by Prince de Conde, trying to unseat Mazarin, that
Mademoiselle de Montpersier, niece of Louis XIII, became known as the
"Maid of Orleans" as she led her soldiers to take Orleans and later Paris, for
Conde’. McNeill (Ref. 279) says that the successful suppression of the
Fronde marked a turning point in European war and statecraft. Northern
Europe then developed civilian control of army supply, paid soldiers
regularly with money from tax revenues and learned to coordinate infantry,
cavalry and artillery. All this had already been done by the 15th century in
Italian city-states.

At the same time as the "Fronde", France was continuing a 23 year war with
Spain, ending it in 1659 in the Peace of the Pyrenees, which probably only
set up a situation which led to still another, later war. One cannot but help
but relate France and German~ in this period to the Middle East in the 20th
century where civil wars and wars with neighbors and various types of
foreign interventions occur almost simultaneously and constantly. The
Peace of the Pyrenees, besides yielding some territories to France, gave
Marie Teresa, Spanish King Philip's daughter, in marriage to Louis XIV.
Supposedly Louis, in turn, gave up all rights to succession to the Spanish

throne. The peace was a triumph for Mazarin, who soon amassed a
tremendous personal fortune amid the poverty of the common people. In the
latter part of his reign, Louis also began to show defects of bigotry, vainness
and arrogance. In spite of everything, however, France was well governed.
Laws were revised into the Code Louis (1667-1673), a system of police was
established in Paris, the streets of that city were paved and lighted by 5,000
lamps.

Upon Mazarin's death Nicolas Fouquet became chief finance minister, but
was found to be incredibly corrupt. He was followed by Jean Baptiste
Colbert, a remarkably able man who formed a nationally unified system of
agriculture, industry, commerce and finance to support the "Grand
Monarchy”. Paris had already become a fabulous place, surrounded by a
ring of markets. Although livestock markets were held twice a week, there
might be 3,000 horses in any one day. Every district had its livery stable.
(Ref. 292) But there was scarcely a year without famine someplace in
France. Colbert actually sacrificed agriculture to industry, as he brought in
Venetian glassworkers, Swedish iron workers and Dutch cloth-makers. By
1669 there were 44,000 looms in the country. The wealth of the business
classes grew, but the condition of the workers became lower than ever on
the economic scale. It has often been said that northern France was the
industrial area while southern France was wine country. That division is
somewhat misleading as witness Languedoc in the heart of the wine country
with 450,000 textile workers in 1680 and some 12,000 artisans scattered
among the villages of Orleans. (Ref. 292) In 1681 the Languedoc canal was
completed, connecting the Bay of Biscay to the Mediterranean via the
canal, the Rhone and the Garonne rivers. (Ref. 8)

By the time of Colbert's death in 1683, France had known 10 years of its
greatest prosperity, but it had not been easy. Representing the classical
Frank of French heritage, Colbert had had trouble with the more frivolous
Gauls. The great nobles refused to invest in his overseas projects and the
workmen refused to give up their 60 public holidays a year (not counting
Sundays) and there were many strikes. Colbert, himself, worked 15 hours a
day, 7 days a week. Lest we think too highly of him, however, it should be
noted that he encouraged the slave trade and increased the number of
galleys in the French navy from 6 to 40, each containing 200 slave oarsmen.

He did not use blacks for these galleys, as he felt that they had no stamina
and died too quickly, but used French criminals and captured Turks. (Ref.
147) His shipbuilding exploited the forestry resources of the entire
kingdom. (Ref. 260)

This was an age of strict manners and loose morals. Public baths became
less frequent than previously both because of the fear of infections,
particularly syphilis, and the moral concepts of the Church. Even at the
king's court baths were taken only rarely, in cases of sickness. (Ref. 260)
Table manners were improving and although the "Sun King" ate with his
fingers, forks were now in general use and napkins were in vogue. As with
many kings and most European nobles, the monarch had many women,
some of whom have become among the famous courtesans of history. But
there were also famous and productive men in this era. Artists, playwrights
(such as Moliere), scultpors, literary men and scientists all thrived in this
glorious period of France. We shall speak of Huygens, Descartes, and others
in the separate science summary at the end of this chapter. The science of
surgery was elevated in France after Felix operated successfully on King
Louis XIV's fistula. It was decreed to be a liberal art and its exponents
began to assume a high rank in French society. (Ref. 53) There were 24
medical schools in France, of which 4 were dominant - Montpellier, Paris,
Toulouse and Strasbourg (Ref. 125), but it must be admitted that in general
medicine was bad. Infant mortality, helped by the physicians’ bleeding,
purging and emetics, was appalling. (Ref. 147) It seems strange that as late
as this 17th century the muddy Seine was the chief water source for the city
of Paris and no purification system was present. Water was sold by carriers
who extolled its virtues, but it was an admitted purgative and, of course,
unpleasant for foreigners. (Ref. 260) Religion was an important phase of
life and as important as politics is now. One of the scientist-mathematicians
of the age was also one of the prominent figures in the great religious furors
of the time. Blaise Pascal at age 11 had already composed a treatise on
vibrating bodies and at 19 he contrived a computing machine. Later he
came close to inventing the calculus, but by that time he was also embroiled
in the intra-faith controversy between Jansenism and Jesuitism. Blase's
"Provincial Letters" became the strongest Jansenist denunciation of the
Jesuit posture. In a sense, Jansenism, in its reformation attitude with the
Catholic Church, was the final effort of the Reformation in France.

Map from Reference 97

Louis XIV was suspected by the rest of Europe of wanting to conquer the
continent, but actually his military objectives may have been much less
extensive, wanting only to secure his own borders from the Spanish
Netherlands in the north down to the Barcelonette Valley, which had access
from Italy. Thus, the two aggressive wars of France were the War of
Devolution to lay claim to a part of the Spanish Netherlands (1667-1678)
and the attack in the Dutch Republic in 1672, which unfortunately flared
into a European-wide war, in spite of Louis' best attempts at arbitration.
Louis XIV built the great palace at Versailles near the end of the century so
that he would never have to return to Paris, but actually he lived there only
during his later years. Like most feudal kings he was always on the move,
generally at war. (Ref. 147) Louis kept a standing peace-time army of
150,000 men, which was increased to 400,000 in the event of war.
Versailles became the official seat of government in May of 1682. The
palace had 3,000 mica-paned windows in 270 rooms, but no baths or toilets.
There were 1,500 jets of water from octagonal lakes. When there was no
war in progress with Holland, some 4 million tulip bulbs were imported
from that country each year. The construction required 36,000 men, 6,000
horses and there was a high mortality rate from both injury and malaria.
(Ref. 131)

Louis’ relations with the Protestant Huguenots of France were one of the
crucial defects of his reign. Fluctuating between tolerance and non-
tolerance for years, this Catholic king finally, in 1681, turned again to a
Holy war against the Protestant Huguenots. The majority of the latter,
terrified, pretended conversion, but thousands fled, abandoning homes and
properties. In 1685 the king revoked the Edict of Nantes and France was
almost entirely Catholic. The few remaining Huguenots in many provinces
were then subjected to horrible tortures, some say much worse than the later
revolutionary terror of 1793. Of the 1,500,000 Huguenots in the country in
1660, 400,000 escaped across guarded borders. The Elector of Brandenburg
gave them so friendly a reception that by 1697 one-fifth of Berlin was
French. The Protestants were unpopular in France probably for the same
reason that Jews were unpopular in pre-World War II Germany - they were
too rich, successful and clannish. (Ref. 147)

Colbert's massive system of state-regulated commerce and industry had
begun to collapse before his death in 1683. (Ref. 53) Many factors played
their part - the drain of men from the farm to the factory and battlefield, self
strangulation from governmental regulation, the loss of the Huguenot
economic skills and some of their savings. Taxes rose even as prosperity
declined. Then, as a final straw, Louis XIV's imperialism frightened
Emperor Leopold I, Elector Maximilian II Emanuel of Bavaria, the Elector
of Brandenburg, King Karl (Charles) XI of Sweden and Stadhalder William
ITI of the United Provinces (Netherlands) into forming the League of
Augsburg for defense against the French. Louis then made a great mistake.
He attacked Germany and thus committed himself to a long, debilitating
war and freed his Dutch enemy to help launch William III in his conquest of
England. By 1695 Louis had only second-rate generals left and although
they were still celebrating victories, the French people, taxed as never
before, were nearing exhaustion in body and spirit. In 1694 famine had
been added, the national economy verged on collapse, transportation was in
chaos, foreign commerce was at a standstill because of enemy fleet
blockades and privateers. (Ref. 53) Poverty, famine, disease and war
reduced the population of France from some 23,000,000 in 1670 to some
19,000,000 in 1700. At last Louis realized his follies in continuing warfare
and the Peace of Ryswick (1697) ended the war in so far as England,
Holland and Spain were concerned. Separate peace was signed later with
the German empire.

We must not make the mistake of centering all our attention on Paris and
the Court in these centuries. Much of what is present day France had only
limited or no real allegiance to the central government. In Aquitaine, for
example, between 1590 and 1715 there were about 500 insurrections or
would-be insurrections among the peasants. In Savoy, which remained
separate from France proper in the early century under Charles-Emmanuel
I, there were innumerable calamities - plague, extreme poverty, bad harvests
and wars of their own. Out of this turmoil a new aristocracy supplanted the
old feudal nobility. (Ref. 292) (Continue on page 961)

THE NETHERLANDS AND BELGIUM

In 1609 Spain recognized the independence of 7 provinces of which
Holland was the chief one, while keeping the entire southern Spanish
Netherlands. Those 7 provinces warred with Spain (1621-1648) as an off-
shoot of the Thirty Years War and after the peace, formed in essence, the
Dutch Republic. (Ref. 8) It was initially ruled by a States-General made up
of representatives from each of the provincial assemblies. The control was
an oligarchy of business men with the aristocratic House of Orange given
the control of the army. Those two ruling classes clashed at intervals, but it
did not seriously interfere with the tremendous prosperity and progress of
the country. In the first half of the century Holland had the intellectual
leadership of Europe. The Frenchman, Descartes, working in Holland,
developed his laws of refraction, his philosophy and his mathematics in his
Discourse on Method, published in 1637. (Ref. 125) Van Leeuwenhoek did
his early work with the microscope and single-celled organisms; the artists
Rembrandt, Hals, Vermeer and Ruisdael did their painting; and Baruch
Espinosa, later known simply as "Spinoza", born in Armsterdam of Jewish-
Spanish heritage, wrote his philosophy, alienating all religion, not accepting
Christianity - and he was cast out of Judaism. Christian Huygens, who
developed the wave theory of light was second only to Newton as the
greatest scientist of the age, inventing among other things, the pendulum
clock. (Ref. 53) Two Dutchmen were the greatest medical teachers of the
time - Sylvius and Boerhaave, both at Leiden. Jan Baptiste van Helmont
(1577-1644) was the leading Paracelsian and iatrochemist of the century,
although he re jected Paracelsius ' astrology, as well as the medicine
practiced by most churchmen of the era. He felt that enzymes were
fundamental to all physiological mechanisms, a most modern concept. (Ref.
125)

Amsterdam became the financial and trade center of the world, where both
expertise and credit were readily available. When Lisbon was closed to
Dutch trade as a result of French and English influence, the Dutch had to
find their own way to the East and they were soon challenging command of
the Indies with Portugal. The Dutch navy became supreme, supplanting
Portuguese commercial power in the South Seas. The Dutch East India
Company took control in Batavia in 1619, Ceylon in 1638, the Cape of
Good Hope in 1652 and Sumatra in 1667. It paid dividends averaging 18%
over a period of 198 years. Of 20,000 vessels carrying the maritime

commerce of Europe in 1665, 15,000 were Dutch. In the middle of the
century 33% of busy Amsterdam's East India trade was in pepper. (Ref. 53,
222)

But to regress a little, in the middle of the century Holland had some serious
difficulties. It was in 1651 that the English Parliament passed a Navigation
Act forbidding foreign vessels to bring any merchandise into England
except that locally produced. One of the Dutch-Anglo wars resulted and the
supremacy of the English naval power at that time was soon obvious. An
English blockade of the Dutch coast ruined the economy and the population
approached starvation. At that point Jan de Witt undertook the leadership of
the country. He was diligent and devoted to the tasks of the government.
For awhile England continued to dominate, taking over New Amsterdam in
North America, among other indignities and thus started the 2nd Dutch
War. In the end the Dutch still lost New York, but gained some territory in
South America and more freedom on the seas. A four year Portuguese war
over Brazilian interests started in 1657. (Ref. 222) Jan de Witt and his
brother Conrelis finally lost favor with their people and were assassinated.
The Dutch Republic went down with them.

Protestant Holland and her successes were an affront to Louis XIV and in
1672 he entered Holland at the head of a large army and swept to within
sight of the steeples of Amsterdam. William of the House of Orange (a
family originally from near Avignon, France), now only 21 years of age,
was nevertheless appointed Stadholder and Captain-General of the army,
forever. Despite his army's holding efforts, he finally had to open the dikes
and flood a great part of Holland, leaving Amsterdam as an island. After
much destruction, the French withdrew and a peace came in 1678, but
William's hatred of the French king never abated and even after he became
King of England, the situation remained unchanged.

In the second half of the century there were 2,000,000[footnote] people in
Holland and it had an army of 120,000, with the 2nd largest navy of the
world. The very fertile land had a large yield per acre, allowing one farmer
to feed two non-farmers, thus allowing the promotion of commerce,
industry and shipping. The Dutch had some 4,000 merchantmen ships.
Amsterdam was the wealthiest city in the world and the greatest port in

Europe. In reality it was an archipelago of 70 islands with 500 bridges and
surrounded by great windmills on watch towers, to get the energy to keep
out the sea. There were multiple industries, factories, warehouses, iron
workers and beautiful homes. (Ref. 131) In the naval yards there were
mechanical saws, cranes, mast-erecting machines and factories with
hydraulic wheels. Dutch dairy farmers were then specializing in dairy
products and the large scale export of cheese. (Ref. 292) From 1609 the
Amsterdam Exchange Bank was the focus of continental trade, commerce
and finance. The fortune of Amsterdam marks the decline of the great credit
fairs of Europe. A stock exchange was developed, dealing in government
stocks and shares in the Dutch East India Company. Even the concept of a
commodities market was present, with men dealing in "futures" in such
things as herring and wheat. Leyden continued as a textile manufacturing
center, but already labor-management troubles appeared as a forerunner of
capitalism's albatross. There were at least 5 great strikes in that city in this
century. (Ref. 8, 292)

Of this number, 10,000 made up the ruling aristocracy. (Ref. 292)

It is of interest that one of the greatest trade commodities in early 17th
century Holland was the tulip bulb. This famous flower had been brought
from Turkey via Carolus Clusius, previously Prefect of the Imperial
Medicinal Garden of the Austrian emperor. Any unusual tulip (often
resulting from a virus infection) became a status symbol and prices sky-
rocketed, with the tulip trade becoming a full-time occupation for many.
Speculation in "futures" followed and laws and regulations were drawn up
defining the way business should be carried on. Sometimes a single bulb
would sell for 2,500 florins. Finally, however, as more and more bulbs
flooded the market the collapse came and by mid-century Holland was on
the brink of bankruptcy with this as a major factor. Tulip-mania ended, but
the flower remained. (Ref. 13) Tea was introduced to the Dutch in this
century, probably from Japan and soon all Europe thought that it would cure
all illnesses. (Ref. 211)

In religion the Dutch found it profitable to practice a degree of toleration
broader than elsewhere in Christendom. The majority were Calvinists, but
the Catholics were so numerous that suppression was impractical. Marrano

Jews accumulated in many of the cities and they were granted freedom of
worship but were forbidden to marry Christians.

The Jews included some of the wealthiest merchants. Some 4,000
Portuguese-Jewish families built a beautiful synagogue, which is still one of
the sights -of Amsterdam. About 1630 Ashkenazaic, or Eastern (German)
Jews arrived but were not welcomed well by the existing Sephardic group.
Dutch cities were flooded with books and publishers and in at least five
different cities there were books printed in Latin, Greek, German, English,
French and Hebrew, as well as in Dutch. Amsterdam, alone, had 400 shops
with books.

The area now called Belgium broke free from Spain for about 20 years at
the opening of this century under Archduke Albert, but then it fell back
under Spanish rule. Although ethnically diverse, the people were
overwhelmingly Catholic, preferring to be dominated by a distant Catholic
Spain than be subjected to Protestant neighbors. They welcomed the Jesuits
and followed the intellectual lead of the Catholic University of Louvain. By
the treaty of Westphalia, Spain had agreed to the closing of the River
Scheldt to foreign trade, so that the city of Antwerp and the country 's entire
economy was crippled. At the end of the century Belgium served as the
battle ground for the French-Spanish wars, with the result that a large
section of the beautiful city of Brussels was destroyed by French
bombardment in 1695. It is somewhat ironic that Liege had developed a
booming armaments industry, supplying much of Europe. (Ref. 279) One of
the few great Flemish painters of this century was David Teniers, the
Younger. (Continue on page 968)

BRITISH ISLES

ENGLAND AND WALES

This 17th century was a time of transition from the island kingdom of
Queen Elizabeth to the great European power of the later 18th and 19th
centuries. (Ref. 131) The struggle of the English throne to rule with

absolute monarchy against the powers of Parliament had ensued through the
reigns of Henry VII and VIII, Edward VI, Mary and Elizabeth I, but it came
to an acute reckoning at the death of James I (Stuart of Scotland and son of
Mary, Queen of Scots) in 1625. When Charles I then became king, civil war
broke out and he countered by declaring war on Spain and France, further
deteriorating the financial state of England. In 1628 Parliament issued the
"Petition of Right", citing the old Magna Carta and reviewing various
limitations on the king. Charles dismissed the Parliament and called none to
meet for 11 years. A long civil war followed (the English Revolution, 1640-
1688), with the king holding out in Oxford and the Parliament controlling
London. Oliver Cromwell emerged as a military organizer, who picked
religious enthusiasm as a rallying agent (Puritans), formed the "Ironsides"
as a democratic military unit, beheaded Charles after a "trial" by a Rump
Commons, suppressed an Irish Catholic insurrection, chastised Scotland
again at the battle of Dunbar (1650) and then took to sea, trouncing the
Dutch navy and making the English fleet supreme. Cromwell's Puritan
supporters, who often wore short hair, were derisively called "Round-
heads" in distinction to the wigged Cavaliers, supporters of the king.
Commercially England was far behind the Dutch, but it soon became clear
that only the English could possibly challenge them. More war with Spain
followed and the Spanish fleet was again destroyed. At Cromwell's death in
1658 his republicanism came to an end and the son of Charles I, Charles II,
was brought back to the throne, restoring the Stuart Monarchy. Under
Cromwell the simple citizen profited little, although the merchant princes
prospered from the wars. Rule by army and naked force, even coated by the
religious cant of Puritanism, was still offensive and at the end Cromwell's
regime was hated perhaps more than any that had gone before.

A few details about the Puritan faith seems appropriate at this time. Durant
(Ref. 53) says:

"Perhaps only among the Jews did religion play so pervasive a role in
everyday life as among the Puritans; and indeed Puritanism agreed with
Judaism in almost everything except the divinity of Christ."

The chief object of life was to escape the fires of hell and the machinations
of the Devil. Only a few were destined by God for salvation. They

attempted to legislate morality, establishing fasting days, the "blue" Sunday
still with us to some extent today, made adultery a capital crime and oaths a
severe misdemeanor. Some say that while the Puritan regimen narrowed the
mind, it strengthened the will and the character and helped to prepare
Englishmen for self rule. An offshoot of the Puritan faith is found in the
Quakers, founded by George Fox. Their basic faith was obscured for a time
with fantasies and bigotry. They distinguished themselves by allowing no
omaments on their clothing, ref using to remove their hats for any reason
whatsoever and by addressing all persons by "thou" and "thee". They were
very intemperate in their denunciation of other sects. Pagels (Ref. 163)
writes that George Fox, although probably unaware of it, carried on the old
Gnostic tradition (see pages 320 and 339), with analogous interpretations of
religious experience.

Under Charles II, military and naval power declined and the Dutch navy
regained supremacy on the seas. In England, however, there burst out pent-
up intellectual energy. We must list such names as Robert Boyle for his
work in chemistry, Robert Hooke, the perfecter of the microscope, Halley
the great astronomer, Christopher Wren, geometer, astronomer and architect
and William Harvey, former student at Padua, who described the circulation
of the blood in man. But above all, we must mention Sir Isaac Newton,
who, using Galileo's and Kepler’s work, formulated the laws of gravity.
Newton developed the calculus and the binomial theorem and used his
mathematics in physics and astronomy. His work had far flung
consequences, even giving rise in the religious field to Deism. The king
conferred an official charter upon the Royal Society of London for
improving natural knowledge, in 1662. Most of the men just mentioned,
along with some poets like Dryden and Waller, were members. The poet
John Milton is said to have introduced more than 600 words into the
English language, all derived from the Latin, Greek or Hebrew. (Ref. 218)

The English common man of this time was a coarse, rough, profane
individual. When prisoners were hanged, drawn and quartered, their heads
were parboiled first with Bay salt and cumin seed, to keep them from
putrefaction while on public exhibition and to keep the birds from seizing
them. (Ref. 211) Most roads in England were nearly impassable. Carts
usually moved at about two miles an hour and were often held up for days

by high water. The various parts of England were essentially cut off from
each other and that was a factor in making the inns of that day so important
and so different from those of today. The inn was a hub of commercial
activity. For example, in 1686 Salisbury in Wiltshire, then a small town,
could accommodate 548 travelers and 865 horses in its inns. (Ref. 292)
Most of London in-city transportation was by boat on the Thames, as the
streets were narrow and covered with garbage and filth, crowds of people
and deep ruts, which made carriage rides hazardous. There were abnormally
cold winters in this century and Londoners held all the festivities of
Carnival (Christmas to after Twelfth Night) on the frozen Thames. In early
1683, however, huge ice floes at the mouth of the river froze in ships, so
that food and goods ran short and prices quadrupled. But city life took
refuge on the frozen river and even huge markets were held. It was a violent
city with murders common and frequent hangings and the inevitable
drawings and quarterings. Although the richest city in Europe, as late as
1660 London was so short of food that 1/5 of the people who were buried in
even prosperous parishes had died of starvation. (Ref. 213) But the nobility
continued to live extravagantly. It is said that when Henry Berkeley, Lord
Lieutenant of Gloucestershire, went to London he took 150 servants with
him. Business in the city was run by fewer than 200 merchants. (Ref. 292)

The population of England and Wales in 1660 has been given at about
5,000,000 and it probably increased to 5,500,000 by 1700. Five-sevenths of
the people lived in the towns with 1 out of every 10 Englishmen living in
London, with its 750,000 people. Of about 800 market towns in England
and Wales, at least 300 were for single trades: 133 for grain; 26 for malt; 6
for fruit; 92 for cattle; 32 for sheep, with others for horses, swine, fishy
poultry, dairy products, leather, linen and whatnot. Livestock could be
driven to market, sheep much farther (up to 70 miles) than cattle, while
grain was carried overland no more than 5 to 10 miles. Leadenhall may
have been the largest wholesale market in Europe after about 1666, when
100 stalls sold beef and another 140 were reserved for other meats, not even
including fish. (Ref. 292) Child labor was the rule and people were proud to
say that any child of 5 years could make his own way. Beer was cheap and
everyone drank it, even children, as it was easier to find than decent water.
Coffee came in from Turkey about 1650 and tea came from China about the
same time. Household staples were dear and the price of grain rose 500%

between 1500 and 1700. The historian Nussbaum has stated that a Gregory
King estimated in 1696 that 1/4 of the English people were dependent upon
alms and that money collected for poor relief equaled 1/4 of the whole
export trade. Air pollution was already a problem because of the
immoderate use of coal. (Ref. 53)

A very severe epidemic of plague broke out in 1665, with 70,000
Londoners dying of the disease. Tobacco was widely considered to be
prophylactic against the plague and even children were encouraged to
smoke. (Ref. 214) In 1666 a fire burned for three days, destroying most of
London north of the Thames. 200,000 people lost their homes, as 2/3 of the
City went up in flames. After this disaster, though, the Corporation of
London organized a fire department, fireplugs were placed in the main
water pipes, streets were made wider and straighter and sanitation was
improved. (Ref. 53) The fire had also destroyed rats, fleas and germs and f
or this or perhaps some unknown reason, plague soon disappeared and it
was 253 years before native cases of the infection again caused death in
England. As a matter of fact, from this time on plague left all of
northwestern Europe, although it remained active in the eastern
Mediterranean and in Russia. Although quarantine and other public health
measures may have helped some, probably the chief reasons lay elsewhere.
Wood shortages had resulted in more stone and brick houses[footnote] and
thatch roofs, which were homes of rats, had given way to tile and the gray
rat had pretty well replaced the carrier black rat. The former did not climb
as much and preferred to burrow in the ground rather than live in roofs and
house walls. Perhaps also there was some transition in the Pasteurella
organism itself, perhaps mutation to the milder Pasteurella pseudo-
tuberculosis. (Ref. 140)

The wood shortage also led to use of coal in houses, and by 1660 Britain
produced 1/2 million tons of coal, five times that of the rest of the world.
English coal, however, interacted poorly with iron ore and was not good for
smelting iron, which was still imported. (Ref. 213)

It will be noted that no credit has been given the medical profession for the
disappearance of the plague. Nevertheless, some progress in this field
continued to be made. Thomas Sydenham was a great clinical physician
who recognized that each major disease had many varieties. Thomas Willis

contributed the De Anatome Cerebi, a thorough study of the nervous
system. A circle of arteries at the base of the brain and the 11th cranial
nerve still bear his name. The Royal Society, with physicians as the major
component, was formed in this century and still exists today. The battle
between apothecaries and physicians over the practice of medicine was
bitter. (Ref. 125) As the power of plague ebbed, that of typhus fever rose.
That infection had first been described in 1643 by Willis, but it did not
become a major problem in this century. Measles, in both the 1 6th and 17th
centuries appears to have been closely associated with small-pox. A severe
epidemic occurred in 1674, causing the extreme degree of contagion of the
disease to be recognized. (Ref. 214)

But we must return to the governmental scene. When James II, another
devout Catholic, reached the English throne in 1685, he brought back to
focus the old "King or Parliament" issue and the latter, continuing the
revolt, promptly dethroned him, thus expelling the last Catholic king from
the British Isles. After some intrigue, Parliament allowed William of
Orange, the great Dutch leader, to arrive with an army and take over the
English throne nearly bloodlessly. His royal claim was through his wife,
Mary, sister of James, although a Protestant. William, a persistent hater of
the French, as we have seen, and Mary made alliances with various
European powers in an attempt to curtail the powers of France. Louis XIV
was William's sole target. He had taken the English throne to acquire the
wealth and land and sea forces to wage a European war. (Ref. 31) He was
not interested in the domestic affairs of England and left those problems to
ministers, the most influential of which was George Savile, Marquis of
Halifax. John Churchill, Earl of Marlborough, was virtually commander-in-
chief of armies, leading 8,000 men against the French in Flanders. Later
Churchill was dismissed because of royal family intrigues, regaining the
king's confidence again only at the end of the century. William just barely
lasted out the century, dying in 1702. He was father-less, childless,
asthmatic, had a tubercular lung, was partly crippled, lived with a loveless
wife (Ref. 31) and was considered a homosexual by most historians. (Ref.
147) During his reign, in spite of an expanding economy, there were
constant political battles between landowning Tories (From "Tory", an Irish
word for robber) and the money making Whigs (apparently a shortened
form of Whiggamore, a band of Scots active in 1648 against Charles I).

(Ref. 53) There were also battles between the English and the Scots and
with William 's supporters and those who would assassinate him and restore
James on the throne. In 1692 an army of 10,000 desperate Irishmen and
10,000 French regulars assembled around Cherbourg, ready to attack
England and restore the Catholic James to the English throne. The
subsequent invasion fleet was destroyed by the British navy's Admiral
Russell, formerly a James backer. On land William's armies were not so
successful, with the war finally grinding down to a truce in the Treaty of
Ryswick in 1696.

In spite of everything there was some grace and beauty in England. After
the Great Fire, Sir Christopher Wren erected 52 new parish churches, most
of which stand today. On the economic scene, the Bank of England was
formed in 1694 to consolidate some older firms and to get on an even
footing with Amsterdam. (Ref. 119) The progressively increasing coal
production, particularly at Newcastle, slowly modernized England as this
fuel was used in such industries as salt manufacture from sea water, sheet
glass, bricks and tile production, sugar refining, bakeries and breweries. We
have mentioned before that throughout history people have tended to resist
technological progress. This was even true when the first stagecoach went
from Manchester to London in a day in 1669 — it would be the end of the
noble art of horsemanship, it would ruin saddle and spur manufacturers and
Thames boatmen. (Ref. 260) In 1675 10,000 silk-workers of London rose
up against the introduction of French ribbon-looms, with which a single
worker could weave 10 to 12 ribbons at a time. Soldiers had to be called in
when the new machines were burned. But business activity continued
anyway. By 1695 the Royal Exchange was handling transactions in public
stocks and shares in the Indies and the Bank of England. (Ref. 292)

(Continue on page 970)

SCOTLAND

Scotland continued as a Protestant stronghold under the common monarchy
with England, with Scotland now supplying the Royal House of Stuart for
most of the century. On the death of Elizabeth, James VI of Scotland had

become James I of England. This was not to say that all was peace and
harmony between the two countries, for the Scots were shocked by the
execution of Charles I and they were almost immediately to claim the son,
Charles II, then exiled in the Netherlands, to be the rightful king of the two
nations. This declaration of Charles II as king was made by the Scottish
"Covenanters", a group formed to protect Scotland against "popish"
practices of the preceding monarch. (Ref. 8) When the new Charles landed
in Scotland, professing to support Presbyterianism, he started immediately
for the English border, but he was met and defeated by an army led by
Cromwell himself. The ultimate result was suppression of this Scottish
"revolution" and the country was again subject to England, its separate
Parliament dissolved, although it was allowed to send 30 delegates to the
London Parliament. Scotland waited and prayed for the Stuart restoration,
which came in 1660 with Cromwell's death and finally the ascension of
Charles IT on the English throne.

Unfortunately, Charles II still had a great tendency to Catholicism and when
upon his death his Catholic brother took the throne as James II of England
(James VII of Scotland) he immediately started removing Protestants from
office, suspended all laws against Catholics and punished ministers who
preached against Rome. When the revolution to depose James was started
in England it was seconded in Scotland, as bands harried the Jesuits,
destroyed the Holyroodhouse printing press and sacked the Chapel Royal.
But when William of Orange took over the English throne, he was not
immediately accepted by the Scots and in traditional fashion the clans
squared off - some for James and some for William - and fought, killed and
robbed each other for months. Episcopalians were soon as much the victims
as Catholics, as Presbyterianism finally began to triumph. Rob Roy, son-in-
law of Gregor Macgregor, became chief of the Macgregor clan in 1693,
controlling lands from Loch Lomond to the Braes of Balquihidder. (Ref.
170, 222) (Continue on page 976)

IRELAND

At the end of this section in the last chapter we described the encirclement
of 4,000 Spanish troops sent to help the Irish in their rebellion. In the final

battle of 1601 the Irish and Spanish lost to the English Lord Mountjoy. The
Irish O'Neill with 100 other chieftains and a thousand followers then went
into exile on the continent. James and Charles I of England continued the
oppression of Ireland, crushing rebellion af ter rebellion and giving land
progressively to Protestants at the expense of Catholics. It even became
illegal for Catholics to buy land, although most of the Irish remained with
their faith, anyway. Caught up in the religious and civil wars of England, in
1641 the Ulster Irish rose, scattering thousands of colonists. In 1646 Irish
Catholics beat the English at Blackwater River, but victory was short lived.
After Oliver Cromwell defeated and beheaded Charles I, he came to Ireland
to get revenge and forever settle the "Irish Question". He smashed Catholic
Ireland and its people with massacres. 30,000 Irish hurriedly left for the
continent and Ireland lost a quarter of its population. Within 50 years
Catholic Ireland was largely owned by wealthy, often absent Protestant
English. (Ref. 110)

Later, when James II fled England he went to Ireland, enlisted a Catholic
army and attempted to retrieve his throne, but was beaten at the battle of the
Boyne in 1690.

Although the resulting treaty yielded the Catholics some land and rights,
neither the English nor the Irish Protestant Parliaments would ratify it and
the oppression continued. All the inhumanity that was to be visited by
Catholics upon the Protestants of France in 1680-1690 had been visited by
Protestants upon the Catholics of Ireland, particularly from 1650 to 1660.
Those bitter years remain in Irish memory as an undying heritage of hate.

Peasants of Ireland were of ten close to f amine. They bled cows, boiled the
blood with some milk and butter and herbs, making a savory blood
pudding, a version of which is still known in County Cork and elsewhere.
In Tyrone and Derry, the coagulated blood was salted and preserved for use
at other times of the year. (Ref. 211) Fortunately for the Irish, one quarter
acre of land will yield 20 hundredweight of potatoes and this, with a few
pigs, could just sustain a family. (Ref. 213)

The battle of the Boyne was actually not the last gasp for Catholic Ireland.
Patrick Sarsfield defended Limerick until a great battle at Aughrim (1691)
where William and Mary's Dutch General Ginkel defeated a French General

St. Ruth and the Irish. Sarsfield then led some 14,000 troops to the
continent to try to continue to fight on against England along with French
troops. (Ref. 110) That Irish brigade subsequently played a prominent role
in French military history. (Ref. 222) (Continue on page 977)

SCANDINAVIA

NORWAY

Many factors allowed the continuation of dominance of Denmark over the
geographically larger Norway. Denmark had a much larger population, a
much larger capital and much more productive land. Only 5% of Norway is
cultivable, while 75% of Denmark is so. The tide of Renaissance splendor
which washed in over Denmark never reached as far north as Norway. The
country was just basically poor. There was fishing, timber and some
farming, but the roads were terrible and the country thinly populated. In the
pre-railroad centuries, all of Denmark's military forces could be assembled
at any point in a few days, whereas it took weeks or months to bring
Norwegians together from scores of separated valleys and fjords. (Ref. 34)
Norway stagnated under Danish rule and the only redeeming monarch was
Christian TV (1588-1648) who made an honest effort to give the
Norwegians a better position. He developed mining, instituted new civil and
religious laws and developed Norwegian trading companies. He founded
Oslo, naming it "Christiana". In his endless wars with Sweden, however,
several Norwegian provinces were given away and Norway's population fell
to about 480,000.

The Reformation was manipulated by Denmark to the great detriment of
Norway in that Protestantism was forced on her as a means of subjugation.
(Ref. 34) Danish language Bibles and hymnals were also forced, doing
much to establish a common Dano-Norwegian language. This is still one of
the languages of Norway, called "Riksmal", in contrast to the now revived
native language "Landsmal". Before Christian IV, the Hansa merchants had
established themselves in Bergen and were a parasitic growth on the whole

economy. One of the most famous Danish Navy heroes, elevated to nobility
under the name of Tordenskjold, was born Peder Wessel, in Trondheim,
Norway.

(Continue on page 978)

SWEDEN (Beginning Sweden's Age of Power; the Struggle for the Baltic)

Sweden, proper, goes 1,000 miles north from its southern tip and has 96,000
lakes, but in this 17th century it had only 1,500,000 people. Iron was its
chief export, making more that 1/2 the total, with silver and copper being
next. (Ref. 131) In about 1625 Flemish techniques of blast furnace
construction and metal casting were imported, allowing the casting of
excellent iron guns, so that soon Sweden dominated the international
cannon market. This boom had been initiated in 1620 when Louis de Geer,
a native of Liege, had sent Walloon ironworkers to this Scandinavian
country. (Ref. 270) The blast furnaces were financed with money from both
Holland and England. (Ref. 260)

The century opened with the youngest son of Gustavus I as first regent and
then King Karl (Charles) IX of Sweden. He established Lutheranism as the
state church and then because of claims of the Polish Sigismund to the
Swedish throne, he invaded Livonia, beginning the long Polish-Swedish
Wars. King Gustavus Adolphus (1611-1632), "Lion of the North", made
Sweden briefly the greatest military power in Europe. Axel Oxenstierna, his
chancellor, helped the nation grow in industry, trade and scholarship.
Sweden entered the Thirty Years War in 1630 "to save the Protestant cause"
in Germany, but in so doing, virtually conquered most of that country.
Adolphus went as far as the Danube but then was killed at age 38, while
leading a cavalry charge. His daughter Christina at 6 years of age became
queen, but she became an eccentric woman and poor ruler, who at 28 years
of age pleaded illness and abdicated to go to Rome, where she announced
her Catholicism and became a patroness of the arts and the lover of
Cardinal Azzolini. Christina was followed on the throne by her cousin Karl
(Charles X, Gustavus), son of John Casimir, count palatine of Zweibrucken,
who had had military experience in the Thirty Years War under Torstensson

and Chancellor Oxenstierna. He had frank expansionist aims and reopened
war with Poland, took Riga and transplanted its iron and steel industry to
Sweden, laying the foundations of an even stronger industrial basis for his
martial policies. (Ref. 131)

After the Treaty of Westphalia in 1648 Sweden, at the peak of its imperial
power and "Mistress of the North", completely encircled the Gulf of Bosnia
and the Gulf of Finland, controlled Finland, Karelia, Ingria, Estonia and
Livonia, most of the Baltic Islands and had two large beach-heads on the
north German shore. The first of these was at the mouth of the Oder River,
with Stettin, Stralsund and Wismar and reaching to within about 30 miles of
Berlin and secondly the Duchy of Holstei-n-Gottorp on the west side of the
base of the Danish peninsula. Needing money during the Thirty Years War,
the Swedes had cut down vast forest areas in Pomerania, with the result that
subsequently many of these areas were invaded by sand dunes. (Ref. 260)

It may have been that frequent harvest failures from cold may have, in part,
stimulated the swings of the Swedish kings into Germany and Poland. (Ref.
224) At any rate, Karl X Gustavus found it easy to invade Poland, but
difficult to subdue it. When Frederick William of Brandenburg tried to steal
West Prussia, while Poland was under duress, Karl turned on him and
forced the Treaty of Konigsberg, which gave East Prussia to Sweden.
Finally, when the Catholic powers on the continent rose up against him, he
turned his forces against Denmark with his army crossing the ice of the
frozen Kattegut (1658). Only a valiant defense of Copenhagen saved the
Danish throne. Although the open sea in the center of the Baltic did not
freeze in winter, the shore line and the northern % of the Gulf of Bosnia did
freeze from November until early May, shutting down all merchant
shipping and in some years, as in that just mentioned, even the Kattegut
froze solid. Finally, Karl Gustavus was defeated on the sea by the combined
efforts of England and Holland, who wanted no nation to exclusively
control access to the Baltic.

Karl (Charles) XI (1660-1697) was not as successful militarily as his
predecessors. He was defeated in 1675 in the battle of Fehrbellin by the
Great Elector of Brandenburg-Prussia, but later by treaty and through the
help of Sweden's new ally, France, he was able to recover Swedish Pomeria.

(Ref. 119) At home, however, Karl XI was determined to reduce the power
of the aristocracy and one way was to demand the return to the crown of
various lands previously given to the nobles, a measure which brought
much disfavor to him, not only at home but in the possessions south of the
Baltic. When he died in 1698 of cancer of the stomach, he was succeeded
by his 15 year old son, Karl (Charles) XII, a frail boy, slender and wiry, but
already a superb horseman, hunter and avid student of military science. He
did not care for the Swedish language and spoke and wrote it poorly, but
used German, which was the court language of all the northern kingdoms.
He also had a knowledge of Latin and French and was a student of the
campaigns of Caesar, Gustavus Adolphus and particularly of Alexander the
Great. Even at his young age he ref used to have a regent and crowned
himself king immediately and took over the reign. He participated in
dangerous sports such as fighting a bear using only a wooden pitchfork, etc.
and played at war as did his contemporary, Peter of Russia. (Ref. 131)
(Continue on page 978)

DENMARK

Although Denmark had a king the actual power was in the hands of
noblemen who lived well, although not on the scale of other European
countries. In large areas of the nation the old Danish "free" peasants had
fallen into a dependent state, roads were poor and heather began to take
over fields, because farmers did not know how to control it. (Ref. 117) Even
then, the Danes were able to send some 80,000 head of cattle to Germany
each year.

The most renowned Danish king, Christian IV, was crowned in 1596 and in
spite of continued war with Sweden, he was a builder, constructing Europe's
largest naval arsenal at Copenhagen and also a new Stock Exchange. He got
into a disagreement with the great Tyco Brahe, living on an island in the
sound by previous royal decree and Brahe went to Prague where he soon
died. During Christian IV's reign, Copenhagen doubled in size. He made the
sad mistake of entering the Thirty Years War on the side of the Protestants
and after being defeated by Tilly he retreated, only to have the German
troops move up and ravage Jutland. Just a few years later, the Swedish

troops also came up from Germany into Jutland and then down from
Sweden into Scania, thoroughly defeating the Danes.

At the Treaty of Broemsebra in 1645 Denmark lost the island of Gotland as
well as Scania, across the sound. Between 1650 and 1660 Denmark lost
more than 20% of its population from disease and starvation. (Ref. 222)
The wars were continued later in the century when Sweden also tried to
take control of Norway. At one point Sweden hired Scots mercenaries to
attack the Norwegians, but the peasants rallied and killed most of them. All
in all, as Sweden's star rose over Europe, Denmark's began to fall.
(Continued on page 981)

FINLAND

Although a part of Sweden, the Finns maintained their own language and
way Of life. At the beginning of this 17th century Finland was made a
Grand Duchy of Sweden and given orders of nobility. Their land served as a
battle ground for the later Swedish-Russian wars for control of the Baltic.
After a temporary peace with Russia in 1617, Gustavus Adolphus
inaugurated the first Finnish Diet, with representatives from the new
nobility, the clergy, the town dwellers (burghers) and the peasants. Peasant
sailors were small traders, operating between Helsinki and Revel, across -
the gulf. (Ref. 292) The University of Turko was founded in this period.
Illustrating that the bad side of Europe was the East, however, was the
Finnish famine of 1696-7 when perhaps 1/3 of the population died. That
was Said to be one of the most terrible events of European history. (Ref.
260) (Continue on page 982)

EASTERN EUROPE

While peasants of western Europe were freeing themselves gradually from
serfdom (with the exception of Spain), feudal power grew and spread in
eastern Europe, until the peasant state became almost slavery. Free peasants
survived only in newly conquered lands where they substituted military
service for rent. But eastern Europe's wheat and rye was in great demand in

western Europe, some of ten going even to Portugal, Spain and Italy.
(Continue on page 983)

SOUTHERN BALTIC AREA

As the century unfolded the great struggle for the Baltic continued with
Sweden, Russia, Poland, Brandenburg and Denmark all being eager
participants. From the Neva Delta southwest, the states lining the Baltic
south shore were Ingria (Ingermanland), Estonia, Duchy of Courland,
Lithuania, Prussia, Pomerania, Polish corridor to Danzig and Brandenburg.
Livonia was now under Polish control, but the Livonian nobility were
descendants of the Teutonic Knights and they were not at all happy with the
Polish imposed Catholicism, so that late in the century (1660) they had no
difficulty becoming aligned with Luthern Sweden. But Livonia, like all the
southern Baltic countries, experienced almost a hundred years of being
overrun by various armies, with shif ting borders with every treaty. Johann
Reinhold von Patkul, of old Livonian nobility - a cultured, experienced
military officer spoke to Charles XI of Sweden about his "reduction" policy
(the policy of returning nobles’ lands to the crown of Sweden, as mentioned
under SWEDEN, above), as Livonia had supposedly been guaranteed
against such, but he not only got no relief but was later sought by Swedish
officers for arrest. He eluded them and helped a little later to form the
alliance which challenged Sweden in the Great Northern War. Thus, in the
end when Sweden controlled almost all, the other concerned powers had
already entered into an alliance to dismember Sweden by war. We shall
have a special feature section on this Great Northern War which actually
began in 1700, at the end of this section on Eastern Europe.

Poland deserves further consideration. While a giant in size, it was the
weakest and most vulnerable of all the European states. It had a population
of about 8,000,000 (France had over 16,000,000), but it was poor politically
and militarily and it became a battle ground for invading foreign armies.
The causes of Poland's impotence were several. First, there was no real
racial or religious cohesion - 1/2 the people were true Poles and were
Catholic, but the other half were Orthodox Lithuanians and Russians, Jews
and Luthern Germans. In addition the Cossacks obeyed only their Ukranian

"Hetman" and refused all orders from the Polish king. To continue, the
political situation was bad. Poland was a republic with a king who was
elective and who had only that power given him by feuding nobility. The
true rulers were the great Polish and Lithuanian lords and among the latter
the Sapieha family defied all kings of Poland. Furthermore, neither king nor
Diet had any machinery for tax collection. The army, although with
individually brave men, had no discipline and the lords might withdraw
their own contingents for any reason, at any time. (Ref. 131) At times,
particularly early in the century, the Poles tried to be aggressive, but in the
end they always seemed to be on the short end of the stick. With these
generalities in mind, we shall give a little more political detail.

Upon the death of Bathory at the end of the previous century, the Polish
Diet bargained for a year before finally giving the throne to Sigismund III,
who, as heir to the Swedish crown, might unite the two countries and
control the Baltic, checking Russia. Half of his reign was devoted to this
vain struggle. The sudden death of Boris Godunov in Russia, gave
Sigismund another idea of also ruling Moscovy. He marched into Russia
with an army, took Smolensk and even entered Moscow for a short time
(1611-1612), retreated and later again marched on that city but was unable
to reach it in the Russian winter. The only result of all this was the
possession of Smolensk and Severski and a strong infusion of Polish
influence into Russian life. (Ref. 53) The rest of Sigismund's reign was a
succession of other disastrous wars, including an expensive struggle with
the Turks, during which time the Swedish king took advantage of his
preoccupation to invade Livonia. Upon his death in 1632 the Diet gave the
crown to his son Ladislas IV, a fine general and an enlightened man who
encouraged debate on religion an~ promoted art and music. He died in 1648
just as a great Cossack Revolt threatened the existence of the Polish state.
(Ref. 53)

The Cossack Revolt, resulting from a complex set of dissatisfactions,
including interference with their Orthodox worship, was first led by Bogdan
Chmielnicki and supported by the Moslem Tatars of the Crimea. As the
Polish Diet selected the Jesuit John II Casimir as ruler, Chmielnicki cast his
lot with Orthodox Russia and offered the Ukraine to Czar Alexis. Russia
accepted, knowing that it meant war with Poland. But the Crimean Tatars

preferred a Polish to a Russian Ukraine and they shifted their support back
to Poland. As the war raged, the Swedish king slipped in and conquered
Warsaw. But the Swedes became over-enthusiastic, plundered the country,
despoiled the churches, etc, until the populace united and pushed them
back. Karl (Charles) X, the Swedish king, died and that part of the Polish
war ceased. The Russian involvement came to an end in 1667 with
Smolensk, Kiev and the eastern part of the Ukraine ceded to Russia. A
terrible side effect of the Cossack Revolt was the accompanying ferocious
massacres of the Polish Jews, who had served as stewards and tax gatherers
for the Polish and Lithuanian estates. Early in the century 40% to 50% of all
trade in Poland was handled by itinerant Jews[footnote], but later they were
butchered without mercy and thousands of infants were thrown into wells or
buried alive. (Ref. 53, 292) In the town of Polonnoye alone perhaps 10,000
Jews were killed by Cossacks or taken prisoner by Tatars. Altogether in the
10 years of 1648 to 1658 it is estimated that nearly 35,000 Jews were killed
in Poland, Lithuania and Russia. This began their massive migration to
western Europe and America, resulting in a completely new distribution of
the Jewish population.

Italian merchants were also numerous in the cities and fairs of Poland in
this century. (Ref. 292)

Poland continued the disastrous war with the Turks and the latter soon
gained sovereignty over the western Ukraine. Jan Sobieski, a general of that
war, was elected king to become Poland's greatest sovereign. He launched
further campaigns against the Turks, wresting the western Ukraine away
from them again and finally defeated them in their last siege of Vienna. As
a help in this last war, Sobieski signed a treaty with Vasily Golitsyn, prime
minister of Russia and incidentally the regent Sophia's lover, by which
Russia attacked the Crimean Tartar vassals of the Ottomans. In exchange,
Poland again ceded Kiev to Russia. (Ref. 131) At home Sobieski, although
he tried, could not improve the conditions of the peasants, for their masters
dominated the Sejm (parliamentary body); he could not compel the rich to
pay taxes for the wealthy were the Sejm; he could not keep the factious
nobles in order, for they refused him a standing army. (Ref. 53) The Turkish
domination of the Balkans had cut off the southern trade routes from Poland
and this, along with the rise of a class of great landlords, lessened the
prosperity of - Poland's commercial centers and prevented the development

of a Polish middle class. The nobles, who owned serfs, sent a regular river
of grain from their estates down the Vistula to Gdansk. (Ref. 292)

Upon King Sobieski's death, in spite of the Sejm's decision to accept Louis
XIV's choice of Prince de Conti, Augustus of Saxony simply marched in
with a Saxon army and took over as king. As he changed his religion to
Catholicism, it was soon apparent that he was shrewd, deceitful and, in
modern terminology, a real "double dealer". At the end of the century in
1700, this section of Europe was wrapped up in the Great Northern War,
with Karl (Charles) XII of Sweden defeating Russia's army at Narva,
Livonia. But Karl did not pursue, probably because of fever, dysentery and
hunger in his army. His horses were eating bark, because of a "scorched
earth" policy of the retreating Russians. By the spring of 1700 only 1/2 of
Karl's troops were fit for action. (Ref. 131)

(Continue on page 983)

RUSSIA (See Map in RUSSIA section, 19th century)

In the last chapter we left Russia with Boris Godunov on the throne. He
immediately had several problems. First of all he was not of royal descent
and this aroused the old boyar families - the Golitsyns, Shuiskys, Romanovs
and others. Next, crop failures between 1601 and 1603 caused catastrophic
famines and finally there were rumors that Boris had actually been involved
in the assassination of the "rightful heir", the infant Dimitri. In 1604 a
motley army of mercenaries from Poland, including restless Cossacks and
disgruntled peasants, marched on Moscow and in the middle of this
uprising Boris died and was replaced by his son Theodore. The advancing
army had the "False Dimitri" with them and through intrigues with Jesuits
and Polish-Lithuanians and various opponents of Theodore, the "False
Dimitri" was set up as Czar, taking a Polish girl as his wif e. Polish-
Lithuanian influence suddenly became very predominant. When it was
discovered that the Czar's wife was Catholic, however, a popular uprising
resulted in Dimitri's death and the appointment of Vasili Shuisky as the new
ruler.

Violence from political, social and religious elements continued to be
present. Led by I.I. Bolotnikov, a former serf, many landless Cossacks and
poor peasants formed a mass movement against not only Shuisky, but all
nobles. Although Bolotnikov was killed in the first battle with the forces
from Moscow, the rebellion continued, again also involving forces from
Poland and Lithuania. Helped by local dissidents Polish forces actually
occupied Moscow in 1611 and 1612. Prince Dimitri Pozharsky, after getting
an agreement with the disgruntled Cossacks, entered Moscow with his own
forces in October 1612 and forced the Poles to surrender. (Ref. 135)

In 1613 the National Assembly elected Michael Romanov as Czar, starting
a new dynasty. Michael was the son of a patriarch Filaret and he re-
established the autocracy and the service nobility as rulers of the Russian
state. Under Michael peace was obtained with Sweden in the Treaty of
Stolbovo in 1618, with Novgorod going to Russia, but other towns in that
area to Sweden. All of the first Romanovs sought to exclude foreign
influence. Thus, while foreigners were needed as drillmasters, armament
makers, merchant contact for furs, etc., they were all enclosed in special
ghettos in Moscow and were treated with general suspicion as dangerous
heretics. There was a new formulation of law, but actually it merely
codified existing laws based on medieval absolutism and orthodoxy. Thus it
was a Criminal offense to look at a new moon, play chess or not attend
church during Lent. As we have noted in the section above, in 1648 the
Ukranians and Cossacks revolted against their Polish rulers for both social
and religious reasons and, gaining independence, put themselves under
Moscow's protection. It should be noted that at this time Russia's
commercial ties were still chiefly with the East and there was no real sense
of property, industry or individual enterprise. (Ref. 213)

In this century Moscow was a rich and beautiful city, as large as London.
Hundreds of gold domes topped with golden crosses dotted the sky-line, as
there were 1,600 churches in the city. Red square was a brawling, open-air
market place. Most of the city was of wood, however, and there were great
fires in 1611, 1626, and 1671. Even the streets were wooden planks to keep
people out of the mud in the spring thaw, although this attempt was often
unsuccessful. At noon all Moscovites stopped for a large meal and then a 2
or 3 hours nap. At night few were on the streets but thieves and cutthroats.

The Kremlin was on a hill 125 feet above the Moscow River, with walls 12
to 16 feet thick, rising some 65 feet above the surrounding rivers and moat.
The whole fortress area included 69 acres.

In 1636 there were more than 40,000 houses in Moscow, but one must not
get the idea that Russia was an urban society. In 1630 only 2.5% of the
people lived in towns and this had increased only to 3% well into the next
century. (Ref. 292) The Nenets continued to be the chief inhabitants of
Arctic Russia, spreading to all the peninsulae of the Kara and Barents seas.
(Ref. 288) For 300 to 400 miles north of the Black Sea there was a "no-
man's land" between the Ukranian Cossacks to the north and the Black Sea
itself and this was the hunting ground of the Crimean Tartars, remnants of
the old Mongol conquerors and now vassals of the Ottoman Turks.
Sometimes these Tartars raided north, taking thousands of Russians as
slaves for the Ottoman slave markets.

In the third quarter of the century the Czar was Alexis Mikhailovich,
considered a demigod, almost inaccessible to his people but called the
"father of Russia", while the earth was "mother". Even when only 16 years
of age he had been called the "young monk" and he spent most of every day
praying and working. On fast days he frequented midnight prayers,
prostrating himself on the ground as many as 1,000 to 1,500 times. He often
ate only 3 meals a week. Near the end of his reign there were about
8,000,000 Russians, only a fraction of which lived in the larger towns. Most
were scattered in villages in forest clearings or along the rivers. May Day,
still celebrated by the communists, was an ancient holiday of rebirth and
fertility after the long, frozen winter.

Czar Alexis’ first wife, Marie Miloslavsky, died bearing her 14th child, but
those that survived were sickly and only 2 lived to rule. Alexis then married
Natalya Naryshkina, raised by his chief minister and friend, Artemon
Mateev, but whose real father was a Tartar. The bride, through her
upbringing in the educated Mateev's home, introduced many western ways
into Czar Alexis' previously monastic life. Their "Camp David" was an
immense wooden building at Preobrazhenskoe of jumbled architecture. A
separate three story building with two peaked towers served for their young
son Peter and his half-brother, Ivan. The palace had baths for family and

servants while its elaborate contemporary at Versailles in France had none.
Alexis died at 47 years, apparently of a respiratory ailment and his invalid
son Fedor (by his first wife) became Czar. His legs were so swollen that he
had to be carried to his coronation at age 15. His mother's family, the
Miloslavskys, had Alexis’ minister and Natalya's surrogate father (Mateev)
arrested, stripped of property and sent as a state prisoner to Pustozersk, a
remote town north of the Arctic circle - such has always been and remains
the custom for change of political power in Russia’ Peter and his mother
remained secluded in the Kremlin.

Fedor, with a scurvy-like disease, mild-mannered and relatively intelligent,
of ten had to rule giant Russia lying on his back and he lived only 6 more
years. But he did one great thing by abolishing a medieval system of
precedence which had burdened the administrative system with boyars
(nobles) of inadequacy and allowed-henceforth offices and power to be
distributed on a basis of merit, not birth. At Fedor's death, his brother Ivan
would normally have been the next czar, but he was lame, nearly blind and
spoke with difficulty so the throne was given to Peter, 10 years old, with the
idea that Mateev, recently removed from exile, would be his advisor,
although his mother Natalya would be regent.

In the middle of the century, even though Russia had tried valiantly to
remain isolated from Lutheran Sweden, Catholic Poland and the Islamic
Turks and Tatars, foreigners and their more modern ideas had begun to f
ilter into Russia so that even the church began to doubt itself, resulting in a
Great Schism, as in the Catholic World long before. Alexis' patriarch, the
iron-willed Nikon was a reformist, trying to get the wandering Russian
liturgy and church ritual back to the classical Greek Orthodoxy. Arch priest
Avvakum, a fanatical fundamentalist, became the leader of the "old
Believers" - many common people who had migrated to the Urals and
forests and established remote villages. Avvakum, originally Nikon's friend,
was banned to Tobolsk in Siberia in 1653, but by writing and lectures he
remained a leader of the Schismatics. Nikon continued as a stern enforcer of
discipline on laity and clergy alike, banning Cursing, card playing, sexual
promiscuity and drinking. Eventually he assumed powers which seemed to
exceed the czar 's and was brought to heel by the four Orthodox patriarchs
of Jerusalem, Constantinople, Antioch and Alexandria. Nikon then

condemned himself to exile but the turmoil did not end and soon there was
a full scale rebellion. After Fedor became czar, Avvakum wrote to him
saying that his father Alexis was in hell, suffering terrible torments because
he had originally backed Nikon. Fedor had the old patriarch burned at the
stake, but as a martyr he inspired 20,000 old Believers to burn themselves
to death in the next 6 years (1684-1690). The Schism almost destroyed the
Russian Church.

It is appropriate to remark here that Russian women were considered silly,
intellectually void, morally irresponsible and potentially evil and
promiscuous from childhood on. As wives they could be legally and
religiously beaten or divorced by forced entrance into a convent, where they
were essentially considered "dead". Any Russian man could thus have two
"divorces" but had to keep the third wife. For the men of that time the chief
problem was drunkenness and in the lower classes the women joined them
in drunken, free-love carousing until all fell asleep in an alcoholic stupor,
night after night. Sisters and daughters of the czar were different than other
women and could never marry Russians beneath their rank (and there were
none other) and their religion prevented marriage with foreigners,
considered heretics. They spent their time in prayer, embroidery, gossip and
boredom, in what was called the terem.

Almost immediately after the crowning of Peter as czar, his half-sister Sofia
Miloslavsky instigated a terrible revolt of the Streltsy, a professional police-
army originally formed by Ivan the Terrible and consisting of 22 regiments
of 1,000 men each and whose officers had become rich through "moon-
lighting" and paying no taxes. Fed by untrue rumors of the poisoning of
Fedor and plotting to kill Sophia's brother Ivan, they stormed the Kremlin
and in a bloody and terrible massacre dismembered and killed most of the
boyars as well as Mateev and finally, after torturing Natayla's brother,
demanded the crowning of young Ivan as co-czar, with Sophia serving as
regent. In that way she succeeded in ruling Russia for the next 7 years. The
impact of all this savage revolt and the murder of many of his family
scarred young Peter for life and affected the whole future of Russia,
Moscow and the Orthodox religion as well.

Peter was a bright, physically healthy and attractive boy, who started to
learn the arts of war from foreigners in the "German" suburb (actually a
ghetto), using his boyhood friends and neighboring children in the vicinity
of Preobrazhenskoe as soldiers, as each year he had more real implements
of war sent out from Moscow. He learned to build and sail western-type
boats from Dutchmen in the foreign colony and developed an intense
interest in the sea. In the meantime, under Sophia the regent and her prime
minister and lover, Vasily Golitsyn, a treaty had been signed with King
Sobieski of Poland in which Russia received Kiev in exchange for warring
against the Crimean Tatars, vassals of Sobieski's enemy, the Turks. Twice
Golitsyn marched south to wipe out those Tatars and twice he came back
soundly defeated, although this was never acknowledged in Moscow
publicly. The Tatars had previously carried off 20,000 Russian men to
slavery in one raid alone in 1662 and by the end of the century Russian
slaves manned the oars of galleys in every harbor in the eastern
Mediterranean. In Golitsyn's two abortive attacks he lost 80,000 men - dead
or taken prisoner - and to aggravate matters the Tatar Khan then raided the
Ukraine again, taking 60,000 more prisoners.

When he was 17 Peter's boyar backers overthrew Sophia as regent and
confined her to a convent. Although officially czar, Peter did not actually
reign until 1694 when he was 22 and in the meantime administration of
Russia deteriorated rapidly. There was reaction again against all foreigners
and they were stopped at the borders unless permission was obtained from
the central government. The patriarch ordered all Jesuits out and even
wanted all Protestant churches in the German suburbs destroyed, but Peter
spent much time there and prevented that. Peter, as all Russians before and
after, was a heavy drinker, often drinking all night long. He even formed
"Peter's Jolly Company" in which the primary requisite for membership was
a capacity for drink and like the lowest Russian worker, they simply drank
every night until they became unconscious. The Jolly Company even
created the "Drunken Synod", a thinly veiled mockery of the Church.
Married at 16 1/2 years, he soon had a male child but thereafter ignored his
wife Eudoxia. At about the time he actually assumed his duties as a czar, he
developed what was apparently focal epilepsy, frequently having severe
spasms about the left side of his face and neck with occasional radiation to
the left arm. This may have resulted from a high fever in 1693, now

speculated to have been encephalitis. By 1695 Peter's war games had
progressed up to the use of 30,000 grown men and as czar he then decided
to attack the Ottomans at Azov and promptly took an army there. He failed,
partly because he had no ships to control the River Don, bordering Azov. So
he next built a shipyard at Voronezh, getting shipbuilding experts sent in by
the Doge of Venice, while he cut up and transported a galley previously
ordered from Holland from its docking at Archangel down to Voronezh to
serve as a model.

Peter's co-czar, crippled half-brother Ivan V, died in the same year that Peter
made a second strike at Azov with 46,000 Russian soldiers, 15,000
Ukranian Cossacks, 5,000 Don Cossacks and 3,000 Kalmucks, semi-Asiatic
horsemen who could ride with any Tatar, along with hundreds of new
barges and 29 war galleys. Af ter a 2 month seige, the Turks surrendered the
city. Peter was in the midst of all the fighting and at the end he reorganized
and fortified the city and then constructed a new fort, harbor and naval base
some 30 miles from the Don on the north shore of the Sea of Azov, at
Tagonrog, using some 20,000 Ukranian laborers. He sent 3,000 peasant
families and 3,000 Streltsy and their families to Azov as colonizers. The
State then undertook to build 10 large ships, but great landowners and
monasteries were to supply everything except the timber. Western
shipbuilders were imported and Russians were sent west to learn
shipbuilding, seamanship and navigation. It is obvious that Russians were
not seamen, although wild Cossacks in boats crammed with sails, had
pirated the Black Sea throughout this century. (Ref. 131, 260)

Young Czar Peter then took off to western Europe on what has been called
"The Great Embassy". The real purpose of this trip was to strengthen the
old alliance against the Turks, as Peter had decided he could not f ight them
alone. King Sobieski of Poland had died in 1696 and France was possibly
preparing for new wars with the Habsburg Empire. In addition, Peter
wanted to educate himself concerning his new navy. The czar went
incognito, although with his towering height of 6' 7", he was hard to hide
and although some deception was kept, the ruling powers of Europe knew
his identity. Officially the top ambassador in the group was Peter's Swiss
friend and confidant, Lefort, and he was assisted by Fedor Golovin and
Prokof y Voznitsyn. There was an additional escort of 20 noblemen and 35

young Russians, chiefly old friends and previous "play" soldiers.
Chamberlains, priests, secretaries, interpreters, musicians, cooks and
soldiers made up the rest of the party of 250. The trek started in 1697
through Livonia, thence through the Duchy of Courland to Brandenburg
and then to Hanover. The embassy's first extended stop was in Holland,
where Peter studied and worked in the shipbuilding yards of both Zaandam
and Amsterrdam. In the latter city he lived in a small house and cooked his
own meals, while he worked each day in the yards. But he also visited
engineers, printers, anatomist Fredik Ruysch, botanist Boerhaave and
naturalist van Leeuwenhoek, inventor of the microscope. After meeting
William of Orange, who was King William of England as well as
Stadholder of Holland, the czar was invited with a small party to visit
England for 4 months. Although still incognito, he did visit with the King
and Princess Anne. His residence in England was Sayes Court, a large,
elegant house with great gardens opening onto the dockyard on a river.
After 3 months Peter's Russians had practically destroyed the house, the
furniture (apparently used for firewood), pictures and portraits (used for
target practice) and the garden. Peter paid 28,000 pounds for permission to
import a limited amount of tobacco into Russia, although the use of this
plant had been accompanied by the death penalty under Czar Michael.

In the meantime the remainder of the embassy in Holland had recruited 640
Dutchmen, including one Rear-Admiral and other navy officers, seamen,
engineers, physicians and others along with ten ship loads of equipment to
go to Russia. Returning home the embassy went through Saxony to Vienna,
where Leopold I reigned as emperor and where Peter was considered
scarcely better than other eastern princes who lived in tents. The embassy
made great efforts to try to get Austria to push harder against the Turks, but
Leopold, becoming more nervous about the French king, was about to make
peace with Turkey. Peter then tried to get the emperor to have the Ottomans
yield Kerch (controlling the entrance to the Black Sea from the Sea of
Azov) to Russia and again Leopold would not accommodate.

At about that time the czar received news from Moscow of a revolt of 4
regiments of Streltsy. The revolters had already all been killed or taken
prisoner by an army under General Patrick Gordon, an old Scots friend and
advisor of Peter's, but the czar decided to go on home anyway. He had

determined to transform Russia into a modern state on western principles.
He initially decreed such superficial changes as the cutting off of beards,
change to western clothing by abolishing the long cloaks and sleeves going
below the finger tips, etc. Women were to use petticoats, skirts, bonnets and
westem shoes.

The calendar was changed to the Julian one so that the old Russian year
7,206 then became the year 1698. Russian coinage was revised and instead
of giving large estates or money for service to the state, one would
henceforth get the "Order of St. Andrew" - a ribbon to wear diagonally
across the chest. The prisoners remaining from the Streltsy rebellion,
numbering 1714, were now "examined" under terrible torture by knout (a
type of lash) and fire and then most were executed. A few of the young
ones were not killed but were either branded on the right cheek and exiled
or had their noses or ears cut off. The Streltsy were no more.

Peter the Great's southern fleet, built at Voronezh on the Don, was never
used, because in the Peace of Carlowitz between Austrians, Poles, Turks
and indirectly Russi ans, the Turks did concede Azov but not Kerch to the
Russians. In June, 1700 the Russian ambassador in Constantinople
negotiated a 30 year truce with a demilitarized zone supposedly to be
established between the Crimean Tatars and Russia, proper. This agreement
infuriated the Tatar Khan, Devlet Gerey. In the meantime, Peter's two most
trusted foreign advisors, the Swiss Lefort and the Scot General Gordon, had
died. And then the Great Northern War came towards Russia. (Ref. 131)

Europe: A.D. 1701 to 1800

EUROPE (A "French Century", with a decline of religion in
political affairs)

Back to Europe: A.D. 1601 to 1700

Even before the Industrial Revolution of the last quarter of this century,
there was dramatic change in Europe. Spain and Italy were declining
rapidly, while England, France, Sweden (exploiting mineral resources) were
developing quickly. But it was a century of almost constant warfare, with
conflict going on in some area all the time and in several localities at once
most of the time. (Ref. 8) McNeill (Ref. 279) emphasizes that there were
four limits to the existing military organizations:

1. The difficulty of controlling the movements of an army of more than
about 50,000 men. New forms of communication and more accurate
terrain maps were needed

2. Slow transport of supplies. Food for the men and fodder for thousands
of horses made a bulky and awkward supply train. Living off the
countryside destroyed the tax-base and allowed the soldiers to get out
of control as they became immersed in plunder, so the rulers sought to
supply armies from the rear

3. Organizational and tactical problems. With the long history of
mercenary contingents and patronage appointments, it was difficult to
organize an effective, cohesive army based on training and ability,
tempered with seniority

4. Sociological and psychological restraints. Peasants were needed to
produce the food and townsmen to provide the money, so that it was
difficult to recruit enough men for a professional army without
infringing on those two necessary groups

The answer to some of the above situations was in the development of new
technology in weapons, such as mobile field artillery; development of
accurate small-scale mapping; the break-down of the armies to divisions,
units of about 12,000 men, but complete within themselves, with infantry,
cavalry, artillery and all supportive elements; and better road-building .

At the same time, in spite of the warfare, the 18th century saw the heyday
of wealthy merchants all over Europe. (Ref. 292) The philosophers were
convinced that this was an age of enlightenment and progress, but it was a
time of bungling politicians, greedy nobles, of immorality and corruption
also. There were other paradoxes. In spite of great scientific advancements
in physics and chemistry, the practice of medicine lagged far behind and
may even have declined. Bleeding, cupping and purging remained
prominent treatments. (Ref. 125) An estimated 60 million Europeans died
of small-pox in the century and early there was an extensive famine, as frost
killed crops as far south as the Mediterranean coast. The winter of 1709 was
especially severe, with most northern rivers and even ocean coastal waters
frozen. (Ref. 222) Typhus fever took its own toll, with a severe epidemic in
Sweden and the loss of 30,000 people in France in mid-century. Yellow
fever killed 10,000 in Cadiz, Spain. (Ref. 222)

The population of Europe went from 140 to 188 million from 1750 to 1800.
The majority of the people were illiterate. In the f irst half of the century
their civilization was based almost as much on wine as on wheat. Europe as
a whole must have been burning 200 million tons of wood yearly up until
about 1790 when coal came into more common usage. At the same time
there were approximately 14 million horses, 24 million oxen, the equivalent
of 4 to 5 million horsepower in the form of wood, 1.5 to 3 million
horsepower potential in 600,000 watermills, 900,000 horsepower in the 50
million human workers and 233,000 horsepower in the form of sails, not
counting war-fleets. (Ref. 211, 260)

A new business development was the concentration of trade and its profit to
warehouses and storage depots. Raw cotton from Central America was
stored in Cadiz, that from Brazil in Lisbon, Indian cotton was pooled in
London, while Marseilles took that from the Levant. Mainz and Lille were
great wine depots. By the end of the century, the Europe of fairs was
turning into the Europe of warehouses. Exchange rates of silver and gold
varied from time to time, seriously affecting the European economy. France
over-valued silver and so that metal was attracted there, while Venice, Italy,
Portugal, England and Holland put a high price on gold. (Ref. 292) Finally
we must emphasize the tremendous effects from the extensive overseas

colonies of multiple European nations. The map of the next page is well
worth study in this regard.

SOUTHERN EUROPE

EASTERN MEDITERRANEAN ISLANDS

The Ottoman Empire maintained its domination of the eastern
Mediterranean islands with the exception of Malta, which remained
independent under the Knights of Malta, until Napoleon's troops conquered
it in 1798. (Ref. 38, 86)

GREECE

Greece was still docile under the Ottomans but Greek sea-farers and traders
became prosperous at the end of the century as blockade runners through
Napoleon's overseas domains and through other waters. By the Treaty of
Kuchuk Kainardji (see page 942) the Turks allowed Russian ships to sail on
the Black Sea, but since they had no ships or seamen of their own in those
waters, they accorded Greeks and other Christians the right to fly the
Russian flag.

UPPER BALKANS

In 1711 Peter the Great of Russia vowed to free the Balkans from "the
enemies of Christ". Both Moldavia (now a part of both Romania and the
Soviet Union) and Wallachia pledged to help Peter, but only Moldavia
actually supplied any troops and at the last minute Wallachia double-
crossed the Russians so that Peter ended up pocketed with only 138,000
infantry, almost surrounded by 200,000 Turks and Tatars. The Russians
surrendered, giving Azov and the Tagenrog harbor back to the sultan,
abandoned their southern fleet and evacuated Poland. Russia did not give

up any territory about the Baltic. Karl (Charles) XII of Sweden, who had
just spent over three years in Moldavia, could now go back to Sweden.
Meanwhile, Brancovo, the Hospodar of Wallachia, was beheaded by the
Turks for his original thoughts of helping Czar Peter, even though in the end
he had reneged. (Ref. 131)

As a result of a war of the Ottomans with Austria and Russia again in 1736
to 1739, northern Serbia and Belgrade were freed from Austrian
domination. Again, in the First War of Catharine, Moldavia and Wallachia
were both overrun by Russian troops and about 7 years later (17~1) by an
Austrian-Russian Treaty the Austrians were to receive the whole western
half of the Balkans. Af ter the Second War of Catharine, the Austrians gave
up Belgrade in return for a strip of northern Bosnia, while Moldavia and
Bessarabia were returned to Russia.

Maize from America had been grown in gardens in the Balkans under at
least ten different names for many years, but it was not until this century
that it began to be grown in the wide open fields, as in much of the rest of
Europe. (Ref. 260)

ITALY

Italy had a population of about 15,000,000, living under divided rule. The
old noble families of Florence and Venice were shrinking and fresh blood
had to be brought in. Titles were granted for money. (Ref. 292) The
Habsburgs took over Tuscany in 1737 and except for Venetia, Genoa and
Savoy, they soon controlled all of northern Italy. The Papal States and
Kingdom of the Two Sicilies remained as previously, and the Genoese
Republic remained independent but was constantly encroached on by
Savoy, France and Austria. The forces which led to the revolution in France
were also at work in Italy in the last of the century and when the French
Revolution did break out, some Italian states tried to join in a coalition
against France. As a result, Napoleon invaded the peninsula, crushed all
resistance and once again Italy became a French dependency. At that time,
General Napoleon was only a young army wizard, but that military
conquest initiated his climb up the ladder of fame and power. The 1797

Treaty of Camp Formio, however, gave Venice to Austria[footnote] and
divided the rest of Italy into 5 republics: Cisalpine with Milan as capital;
Liguria, with Genoa as capital; Roman, including Rome itself; Bologna;
and Parthenopean, which included the entire southern third (except Sicily),
with Naples as the capital. (Ref. 8, 213)

Up until this date Venice had preserved its own constitution and closed
citizenship throughout the centuries. (Ref. 260)

Naples, with perhaps 500,000 people, was the 4th largest city in Europe,
although at the end of the century at least 100,000 were extremely poor,
living like "filthy animals". (Ref. 260) All southern Italy had a feudal
system, with powerful barons who were sovereigns on their own estates. In
the Kingdom of Naples over 50% of the population were subject to feudal
justice and in some provinces this was over 80%. As in the rest of Europe,
food supplies in Italy frequently were short and unreliable. As an example,
Florence experienced hunger in 111 years of the 400 leading up to 1791 and
had had only 16 "very good" harvests in that same period. Maize, with its
high yield, finally put an end to the recurrent famines in Venetia. All over
Italy, soon the peasants ate maize and sold their wheat. Transportation and
communications remained slow. With horses, coaches, ships and runners,
messages could make at most 100 kilometers in 24 hours. (Ref. 260)

The islands bordering the Tyrrhenian Sea were in constant political turmoil
throughout this century. In 1713 Spain ceded Sardinia (along with Naples)
to Austria and Sicily to Savoy, but by 1720 the latter had exchanged Sicily
for Sardinia. In 1732 Genoa recovered Corsica from insurgent forces, who
had revolted two years previously, but French help was necessary to control
the island. In the same spot local clans under Paoli again rebelled in 1755
against Genoese rule and established a democracy, but France bought the
island from Genoa in 1768 and crushed Paoli, only to see him rise again in
1793. On the latter occasion he was defeated by Napoleon, himself a
Corsican. In that same year, Sardinia tried to get autonomy within the
combined kingdom of Piedmont-Sardina. Through this century Sardinia
was a strong military state - the Prussia of Italy. Usually it was allied with
Austria through Eugene of Savoy, a great military leader for the Habsburgs.

In spite of the turmoil, Italy continued to be a center for scientific and
medical studies. Luigi Galvani started electro-physiology with electrical
stimulation of nerves; Allessandro Volta developed a battery. Giovanni
Morgagni, at the medical school at Padua for 56 years, is considered the
"father" of pathological anatomy, describing the changes associated with
such diseases as cirrhosis of the liver, kidney tuberculosis, syphilitic brain
lesions and pneumonic consolidation of lungs. (Ref. 125)

CENTRAL EUROPE

GERMANY

After a long period of disorderly aftermath of the horrors of the Thirty
Years War, the German-speaking people, with peace, stability and their
natural strength, returned to add to the European civilization, particularly in
music and Rococo style architecture. (Ref. 33) Germany was made up of
20,000,000 people divided into more than 300 practically independent
States, each with its own sovereign prince, but all loosely subject to the head
of the rather phantom Holy Roman Empire. The average east German
village was still somewhat "servile" in 1750, however, and serfs still owed
their masters heavy services and payments and they were not allowed to
leave their estates in most German areas as late as 1788. (Ref. 213) In spite
of considerable river traffic on the Rhine, Elbe and Oder rivers, overland
transport still carried 5 times as much goods as waterways. It has been
estimated that there were 40,000 horses used as dray animals, not including
those on farms. (Ref. 292)

The story of this country f rom this time on was that of the power policies
of two royal families - the Prussian Hohenzollerns, - represented by
Frederick I, Frederick William I and Frederick 11 and their counter-parts,
the Austrian Habsburgs. The complete power structure also involved
Catherine IT of Russia and to some extent, England. We shall try to clarify
this situation by discussing some of the individual states, separately.

PRUSSIA

The Junker landlords of Prussia distinguished themselves by competent
management and their quick adoption of improved agricultural techniques.
(Ref. 8) On the political side, the Prussian Elector Frederick III[footnote],
son of the Great Elector, had himself crowned King Frederick I of Prussia
in 1701, but his extravagancies merely hastened bankruptcy of the state.
Some 300,000 deaths from plague in 1709 did not help the situation. (Ref.
222) Then came Frederick Wilhelm I (1713-1740), an austere king who
hammered out a military power. At his death Prussia had the 4th largest
army in Europe and strong financial resources. He was a friend and ally of
Peter the Great of Russia, but in his personal life he was eccentric and
unfortunate[ footnote]. He suffered from a severe, combined form of
porphoryhia, a genetic disease which can affect skin and visceral organs at
times, along with great abdominal pain. He was subject to sudden,
uncontrollable attacks of rage at which times he might even beat his own
children. His eccentricities included hatred of everything French and he had
a hobby of collecting giants from all over the world, some 1,200 of them,
whom he formed into two battalions of grenadiers. On his death in 1740, his
son Frederick II became king and initiated the Francophile tradition.

One must distinguish between the Fredericks I, II, and III of Germany in the
12th to the 15th centuries and these Fredericks, who were electors and kings
of Prussia

Frederick Wilhelm I married his Hanoverian first cousin, Sophia Dorothea,
daughter of the future king George I of England

At the end of the Great Northern War, which will be discussed again later,
Prussia had acquired the city of Stettin and some Baltic islands. Having
been raised as a warrior prince, Frederick II, later to be called Frederick the
Great, hastened to put the Prussian war machine to work by invading Silesia
and provoking war with the Habsburg Empire. (Ref. 131) He gained not
only Silesia but after three wars with the Austrian Empress Maria Theresa,
also gained a part of Poland. The Seven Years War (1756-1763), the last
one with the Habsburgs, involved Prussia, Hanover and England on one
side and France, Austria and Russia on the other. After initial- victories
through Saxony and Bohemia, Frederick began to meet def eat and was
pushed back so that at one time the Russians even occupied Berlin. In the f
inal Peace of Hubertusburg, Saxony was restored to its pre-war size, Silesia

was retained by Prussia and Frederick agreed to vote f or Maria Theresa's
son Joseph for emperor when the occasion developed. Frederick estimated
that that war alone cost him 853,000 troop casualties and 33,000 civilian
deaths. (Ref. 222) Furthermore, he had developed a great fear of Russia and
started a campaign of vilification while at the same time plotting that future
relations with that country should be based on friendship. Thus, in 1770 he
made an alliance with Catherine the Great. In the newly gained Silesia, the
government combined with land owners to invest in mining, iron and
textiles. In Prussia proper Berlin had 140,000 people by 1777. (Ref. 8)
Imported techniques, including artificial drainage and canalization
particularly, allowed considerable new land to be brought under cultivation
and thus added wealth. (Ref. 279)

Frederick the Great actually hated the German language and thought that
anything French was great. He had a long and close relationship with
Voltaire, as fellow philosopher, poet and confidant. At one and the same
time he had a great mind, while being a benevolent king and a great
general. But he was also an untrustworthy ally and a power-mad monarch.

The advancement of Prussia as the dominant northern Germanic state did
not occur by accident. Frederick William II came to the throne in 1786 and
when France declared a new war on Austria in April of 1792 Prussia and
most German states sided with the new Emperor Francis II. Austro-Prussian
forces met severe defeat at Valmy, allowing the French to take the offensive
on all fronts. Russia invaded Poland and in spite of the deterioration of the
Prussian armies, in the resulting last partition of unfortunate Poland,
Warsaw and environs with its 1,000,000 people fell to Prussia. In the Peace
of Basel of 1795 Prussia recognized the legal status of the republican
government of France, while the latter promised neutrality of the German
states north of the Main. (Ref. 184)

But Prussia was not all militarism. In 1717 Frederick William I had made
primary education compulsory and in 20 years he founded 1,700 schools.
German universities became excellent, although German literature suffered
some from lack of national consciousness and the influence of French
among the aristocracy. German intellectuals remained cosmopolitan and
considered nationalism as a "political monstrosity". The development of

science and philosophy shared with powerful secularizing forces in
weakening the influence of religion on German life. Art and architecture
was not at its best, but music was supreme, with Handel and Bach. Bach's
works are said to be the Reformation put to music and he is accepted as the
"greatest musical poet that has ever existed". (Ref. 8) Christian Thomasius
furthered the cause of the German language by lecturing at the university in
German, rather than Latin. A literary revival was initiated near the end of
the century as the works of the great Johann Wolfgang von Goethe began to
appear. Frederick von Schiller contributed some fine dramas. Gottfried
Leibniz, scientist and mathematician, founded the Academy of Sciences.

Map taken from Reference 97

BAVARIA

Bavaria continued to be ruled by the Wittelsbach family. In 1777 the Elector
of Bavaria, Joseph Maximilian, died childless and the nearest heir, another
Wittelbach concluded a pact with Emperor Joseph of the Habsburgs
whereby most of Palatinate and northern Bavaria went to Austria. Other
Wittelbachs, along with Frederick II of Prussia, anxious to keep things in
balance, protested Austria's aggrandizements and opened the War of the
Bavarian Succession. In a year Bavaria had regained her territory. At the
end of the century, however, Bavaria became the chief battlef ield of the
Spanish War of Succession and Austrian troops devastated the land. In 1799
Elector Maximilian I united all Wittelsbach lands and allied himself with
Napoleon, as a protection against Austria.

It is interesting that in spite of some food shortages, the potato was slow to
be adopted in middle Europe. In 1795 the poor of Munich refused to eat a
supposedly scientific soup containing potatoes. (Ref. 211) At the end of the
century there was one market in Bavaria for every 7,300 inhabitants. (Ref.
202)

SAXONY

The young Elector of Saxony, Augustus II, had also been elected King of
Poland in 1697. In August of 1706, as part of the Great Northern War, the
Swedish army crossed the Silesian frontier to march on Saxony itself, to
permanently dispose of the Elector Augustus. The Saxon governing council,
having already sacrificed 36,000 troops, 800 cannon and 8,000,000 lives in
an effort to keep Augustus on the throne of Poland, wanted no more trouble
and signed the Treaty of Altranstadt, which disavowed Augustus and agreed
to supply the Swedish army during the coming winter and to turn over all
Swedish "traitors" harbored in Saxony, a feature which finally resulted in
the horrible death of the Livonian patriot, Patkul - first tortured on the
wheel, then beheaded and quartered. While resting in Saxony in 1707 the
Swedish King Karl XII was visited by John Churchill, Duke of
Marlborough, who already had Louis XIV more or less "on the ropes" and
then wanted to scout the Swedish king's intentions and get a look at his
troops.

Elector Augustus II eventually did return to his people and then he and Karl
XII got along well. Actually they were first cousins, as their mothers were
sisters as Danish princesses. (Ref. 131)

In spite of all the warfare, Elector Augustus II continued the policies of his
predecessors and collected fabulous works of art, so that Dresden
eventually became known as Florence on the Elbe. His son and successor
Augustus ITI carried on the same tradition. (Ref. 47) Dresden, Leipzig and
Chemnitz specialized in porcelain, silk, armaments and textiles, but the first
cotton spinning mill was not started until 1794. Only 5 of Saxony's 200
towns had over 10,000 people. The Swiss Albrecht von Haller, a disciple of
the Dutch Boerhaaves settled in Saxony and helped to create the University
of Goettingen. He became a great physician, physiologist, botanist and
neurologist. (Ref. 8, 125)

Saxony served as a battleground for many of the Prussian campaigns and in
the Second Silesian War of 1744 Frederick II took 80,000 men through
Saxony to invade Bohemia.

Shortly thereafter Saxony joined an alliance with Austria, England and
Holland against Prussia, again on the wrong side, so that at the Treaty of
Dresden, Saxony was forced to pay Prussia 1,000,000 rix dollars. Once

again in the Third Silesian War (the Seven Years War) Frederick invaded
Saxony with 67,000 men and defeated the combined Austrians and Saxons,
taking 18,000 of the latter as prisoners. At the final peace, however, the
original status of Saxony was preserved. In the War of the Bavarian
Succession (1778) Saxony even joined Prussia, with Prince Henry joining
Frederick in another invasion of Bohemia, but no real battles with the
Austrians developed. For the remainder of the century, Saxony continued to
oppose the grandiose schemes of Emperor Joseph.

HANOVER

In this century Hanover, in northern Germany, had about as much power as
Denmark, Prussia or Saxony. Its status was helped when George, the
Elector of Hanover, became George I of England. He never did like the
English, nor they him, although they would take any sovereign Protestant
over a Catholic. George spent most of his time in Hanover and used the
English navy and money to try to make Sweden negotiate peace with
Denmark and the German states on the Baltic. (Ref. 131)

LESSER STATES OF GERMANY

Like Bavaria, Baden and Wuerttenberg became battlefields at the end of the
century as the French forces fought Austria. Throughout these years,
although their princes had difficulty acknowledging it, these lesser states of
Germany lost more and more power and influence. The Rhineland of west
Germany became the first industrial area, with the first steam engine
installed in a lead mine near Duesseldorf in the Duchy of Berg in 1751.
(Ref. 8)

AUSTRIA | HUNGARY | CZECHOSLOVAKIA

Although all German states were nominally subject to the Holy Roman
Empire, the real heart was the Austro-Hungary-Bohemia region, ruled by

the Habsburgs in Vienna. In 1711 Austria lost 300,000 people to the Black
Death and another Turkish army was near their border. The latter were put
to rout by Prince Eugene of Savoy, who had become a great militarist for
the Habsburgs. His success at this time was in part due to Austrian cavalry
using fine Arabian horses. (Ref. 260) Emperor Joseph I, the elder son of
Leopold, had a premature death and Karl (Charles), trained to become king
of Spain, now had to be Austria's emperor as Karl (Charles) VI. Raised as a
Spaniard, he remained such. The Spanische Reitschule (Spanish Riding
Academy) is a remnant of his Spanish court. His death in 1740 marked the
end of the male line of the Austrian Habsburgs, but it was the beginning of
Austria's greatest era. (Ref. 181) Interpreting Karl's death as indicating a
coming weakness in the empire, Frederick II of Prussia was tempted to
move on Silesia for the First Silesian War[footnote]. (Ref. 8)

The Silesian wars between 1740 and 1745 were actually part of what is
often called the War of the Austrian Succession, as a coalition of European
powers tried to block the accession of Maria Theresa

When Karl VI's daughter became Empress Maria Theresa, the Austro-
Hungarian Empire included all of present day Austria except Salzburg,
Hungary, Bohemia, Moravia, Silesia[footnote], Transylvania, Croatia,
Slavonia, Dalmatia, Istria with Fiume and Treiste, parts of southwestern
Germany, Belgium, Lombardy, Tuscany, Sardinia, Peacenza and Parma.
The intrigues and power politics of this empress involved not only
Frederick the Great but Catherine II and Peter of Russia. Their wars for
prestige and for portions of Poland seemed almost without end. Austria's
part in the Seven Years War, which exhausted the country, is more fully
explained in the sections on GERMANY, FRANCE AND ENGLAND. In
1772 Maria Theresa shared with Prussia and Russia in the first partition of
Poland.

Actually, as Maria Theresa officially came to power at the Treaty of Aix-la-
chapelle of 1748, ending the War of the Austrian Succession, Silesia was
temporarily given to Prussia. (Ref. 38)

Austria, itself, with 6,000,000 people was prosperous. All land was owned
by nobles or clergy and tilled by serfs. The nobles were not particularly
religious, but worked to promote the Catholicism, which helped their serfs
to accept their earthly lot. Industry was initiated as Maria Theresa founded a

woolen manufactory in Linz, employing no less than 15,600 workers
(26,000 by 1775) although about 2/3 were spinners and weavers working at
home. (Ref. 292) The empress was a great patron of Mozart and he played
for her at Schoenbrunn Castle. The Dutchman Gerhard van Swieten,
another pupil of Boerhaave, was called to Vienna by the empress to be her
personal physician and he started a medical school which drew flocks of
students from all over Europe. Incident to this was the building of the
famous Allgemeines Krankenhaus in 1784 as a hospital for teaching and
caring for the underprivileged. (Ref. 125)

After 1765 Maria Theresa[footnote] shared her power with her son Joseph
II until her death in 1780. Joseph anticipated the welfare state by 150 years.
The spate of reforms was torrential. He abolished serfdom and torture and
eliminated heresy as a crime. He made German the official overall
language, and antagonized his nobles, his mother, and even the pope.
Joseph was followed by Francis I, who engaged in a constant and losing
war with the advancing French. At the Peace of Basel, Austria agreed to
French control of almost the entire left bank of the Rhine and gave up
Belgium.

The husband of Maria Theresa, duke of Lorraine and grand duke of
Tuscany, was given the title of Emperor Francis I, although he had very
limited authority

Although a part of the great empire, Hungary did not lie quietly. The
Rakoczi rebellion from 1703 until 1711 was a Hungarian revolt against the
Imperial Crown of Austria. In the end it only resulted in more disunion
among the people. By that time Karl (Charles) VI was emperor and he
sincerely wanted the Hungarians to be treated generously. The reign of
Maria Theresa is considered by some Hungarian historians as a period of
rest and recuperation, but by others as one of stagnation. Population and
immigration both increased rapidly during the period of peace. The wealth
of the Catholic Church and the size of the mansions and estates of the great
nobles also increased, while the economy was still agricultural and industry
was kept down by the Austrian rulers. The Protestant Church was
suppressed and no Protestant could enter public service. By the end of the
century only half of the magnate class was Hungarian and even they spent
much time in Vienna and Paris, intermarried with German-Austrian and

Bohemian aristocracy and often forgot or didn't even learn their Magyar
language. The middle nobles were the ones who remained home and kept
the national spirit and the language alive. The immigrants were from all the
surrounding states but the greatest number were from south Germany and,
in general, classed together as "Swabians". In the 1760s and 1770s there
were 50,000 German immigrants and another 25,000 in the 1780s. (Ref. 8)
By the end of Maria Theresa's reign the 3,350,000 Magyars made up 35%
of the total population and were chiefly in the central part of the country.
There were 1,500,000 Romanians, 1,250,000 Slovaks, 1,000,000 Germans
and 750,000 each of Croats and Serbs. The latter were always a thorn in the
Hungarians' flesh. Although Joseph II replaced Latin with German as the
language of administration and schools, when his brother Leopold II
became emperor in 1790 he reversed this decree.

Bohemia's fate was similar to Hungary's. Subject to the Habsburg autocratic
rule the life of both Bohemian and Moravian peasants was hard, with
compulsory labor accepted. Persecution of Jews began in 1744, with some
fleeing to England. (Ref. 260) Near the end of the century the Czechs began
to feel a spirit of national unity and started ideas of freedom. Leopold II
tried to conciliate them, but he was the last Austrian ruler to be crowned
King of Bohemia.

To complete our story of the 18th century Habsburg Empire, we must relate
that upon Joseph II's death, his brother, who had succeeded their father as
grand duke of Tuscany, became Emperor Leopold II. The state was in some
disarray and he had to repeal most of Joseph's radical reforms. After
reaching an agreement with Frederick William II of Prussia, he negated the
old alliance with Catherine of Russia and concluded a separate peace treaty
with Turkey at Sistova in 1791. He also marched troops into the Austrian
Netherlands and suppressed the Belgian Republic. He was succeeded in
1792 by his son, Francis II, who was soon confronted by the French
Revolution. His armies were defeated by Napoleon and by the Treaty of
Campo Formio of 1797 he ceded the left bank of the Rhine to France, but
obtained Venetia and Dalmatia. In 1798 he joined the Second Coalition
against France and was defeated again.

SWITZERLAND

In 1715 the Swiss Federation was made up of 13 Cantons, a complex of
three peoples, four languages and two faiths. Most of the Cantons were
oligarchies, with very limited suffrage, but serfdom had almost completely
disappeared. Bern was the largest canton, embracing approximately 1/3 of
Switzerland. Religion was half the government and half the strife. (Ref. 54)
The two rival religions - Calvinist and Catholic — exuded hatred and
shackled the mind. Some Cantons prohibited any but Catholic worship and
some forbade any but Protestant. Geneva was not a Canton, but a separate
republic with French speech and Calvinist faith. The emigration of
Huguenots to this city was a great boon.

Map taken from Reference 97

In 1789 Switzerland was overrun by the armies of Napoleon and he set up a
centralized Helvettic Republic, which was in close alliance with France and
all the old liberties of the Cantons were wiped out. The most famous Swiss
of the century were Jean Jacques Rousseau, philosopher, author and
political theorist, who developed a persecution mania, living some in
Switzerland, some in England and some in France and Albrecht von Haller,
who did most of his medical work in Saxony.

WESTERN EUROPE

In Western Europe this was a century of warfare, at first involving Spain,
France and England primarily and then the latter two especially near the
end of the century.

The War of the Spanish Succession lasted from 1701 to 1714, beginning
with the death of the last Spanish Habsburg, when Leopold of the Austrian
branch of the family opened the struggle trying to get the Spanish
inheritance of Carlos II, by invading Italy. The idea was to keep Louis
XIV's grandson Philip off the Spanish throne and in his effort he was
encouraged by England and the Dutch Republic. The Holy Roman Empire,
Portugal and Savoy also declared war on France, while Spain, itself and
France were backed by the Electors of Bavaria and Cologne. The

antagonists fought most of the battles in the beautiful countryside of
Bavaria. At the end, the compromise Peace of Utrecht allowed Spain to
keep Philip, but the Spanish Netherlands went to the Austrian Habsburgs
and Spain's previous Italian territories went to Savoy. (Ref. 8)

The new luxury of the 18th century meant a change in the living conditions
of both rich and poor. Of primary importance was the separation of living
quarters from the workshop or business. Up until this time merchants’ and
artisans' houses had the shop on the lower floor, the master's dwelling above
and the workmen's or apprentices' rooms above that. (Ref. 260) Industrial
activity was widespread so that there was not a town or City without its
own looms, forges, brick or tile works or sawmill. In some areas there were
huge concentrations of workers: 30,000 in the coal industry in Newcastle;
450,000 weavers in Languedoc; 1,500,000 textile workers in five northern
French provinces. But commerce and its accompanying wealth were in the
hands of but a few, 4 or 5 merchants in Seville, 8 or 9 in Le Mans and less
than 1% of the population of Marseilles. Similarly, the nobility of
Lombardy made up 1% of the population, but possessed about 1/2 of all
landed property. (Ref. 292)

SPAIN

We have mentioned Spain's problem of establishing a new ruler after the
death of the imbecile king Carlos (Charles) II in the remarks just above.
Practically no battles were fought on Spanish soil. Although both the
English King William and the Emperor Leopold died during the war, it
dragged on with Eugene of Savoy handling the Habsburg war machine and
the great Duke of Marlborough (John Churchill) handling English policy.
Spain did lose Naples, Parma, Sardinia and Milan to Austria, while Sicily
went to Savoy and Gibraltar and Minorca went to England. In the last 3/4 of
the century Spain was more or less involved in continuous wars with
various European alliances over various territories and successions - the
War of the Polish Succession, the War of Jenkins Ear with England, the War
of the Austrian Succession, the Seven Years War, then war with France,
then with France against England again. At the end of that last one, at the
2nd Treaty of Ildefonso, France obtained Louisiana from Spain. In spite of

all, the Spanish overseas empire brought wealth and prosperity throughout
the century. Spain made war on American gold.

Map taken from Reference 97.

Philip V, grandson of Louis XIV was the first Bourbon on the Spanish
throne. A melancholy man, he was dominated by women, first the princesse
des Ursins, lady in waiting to his first consort, Maria Luisa of Savoy, then
by his wife Elizabeth Farnese, who in turn was dominated by the chief
minister, Cardinal Alberoni. In the War of the Polish Succession Naples and
Sicily passed to Don Carlos (later Carlos III), son of Philip and Elizabeth.
In the War of the Austrian Succession Spain obtained Parma and Piacenze
for Charles' younger brother, Philip. Philip V was succeeded by Ferdinand
VI, his son by Maria Luisa. In the years before the Seven Years War both
France and England had sought a Spanish alliance, but Ferdinand, by
manipulating his ministers, kept Spain out of that war during his lifetime.
He died in 1759 and was followed by his half brother, Carlos (Charles) ITI,
who finally succumbed to pressure from France and got involved in the war,
which drained Spanish revenues and resulted in England receiving Florida,
although he did obtain Louisiana from France. Because he helped the
Americans some in their revolution, Carlos re-obtained Florida and picked
up Minorca from England at the Treaty of Paris of 1783. Carlos III is
regarded as the greatest Bourbon king of Spain, but Carlos IV, who
followed, was ineffective.

The best silk in Europe was grown in Valencia, where there were 5,000
looms by 1787. By 1790 there were a hundred cotton factories in Catalonia,
with some 80,000 workers, chiefly women. Trading, even in slaves, was
generally farmed out to Genoese contractors and French merchants
dominated Seville. (Ref. 213) Galacia had 5,243 watermills and 12
windmills in an area of 2,000 square leagues and a population of 2,000,000.
(Ref. 260) The Basque country was tending to become a national market. In
the end, even Church property and estates went on sale and overall, land
ownership became concentrated in a few hands and the poor became still
poorer. (Ref. 292)

PORTUGAL

Portugal had now practically abandoned the Indian Ocean, except for its
colony at Goa, India to which it occasionally sent a boatload of convicts.
This was a century of Portuguese alliance with England. The Methuen
Treaty of 1703[footnote] established Portugal's wine trade and admitted
English manufactured products without duty. Many of the vineyards in the
Oporto area were English owned and England admitted the wines at
markedly reduced duties, much less than for French wines. (Ref. 222) The
English penetration of the country was such that some Europeans referred
to Portugal as an English colony, and it caused some warfare with Spain
again and again. Lisbon had expanded into a huge city, with the rich
becoming excessively so and the poor-more wretched. Shanty towns grew
up around the margins where once there had been fields. There were as
many as 10,000 vagrants in that city. (Ref. 292) But Lisbon was destroyed
by a great earthquake in 1755, followed by a seismic wave with the
flooding of the Tagus River basin and a great fire, so that all the city's
treasures disappeared, along with the thousands-of deaths. (Ref. 222) The
Jesuits were expelled from Portugal in 1759. Later, at the time of the French
Revolution the nation was drawn into the war through its English alliance.
Negotiated by John Methuen actually to better encircle Spain, which was
loyal to the Duke of Anjou, Philip V and the French. (Ref. 272)

FRANCE

Like the 17th, this was a French century and French culture was as
encompassing as French power. (Ref. 74) In the last years of his reign,
Louis XIV drifted to the propitiation of the papacy, with continued and
aggravated religious persecution. Great numbers of most valuable
Protestant subjects left France, taking arts and industries with them, leaving
mainly Catholic believers or Catholic atheists behind. Other serious
troubles accumulated at the same time. The year 1709 was perhaps the
worst year France had known. All the rivers and the Atlantic coastal waters
froze, with the winter wheat, vines and fruit trees killed. Children starved to
death and both public and private finances were in desperate ways. Then in
1711 the Grand Dauphin, Louis' only legitimate heir, died of small-pox and

within 11 months the Dauphine and 2 of her 3 sons died of measles, leaving
only the youngest grandson Berri. Even he died in 1714 after an accident on
a horse, leaving only his nephew as heir to the throne. Thus, when Louis
XIV died with a gangrenous leg in 1715, this great grandson became Louis
XV, with a great uncle, Philippe Duc d'Orleans as regent. (Ref. 147) There
resulted much unrest among the common people and a tumultous workers'
strike of 1716 in Abbeville had to be put down with armed troops. (Ref.
292) During that interim Regency, a transplanted Scot, John Law, attempted
to redeem the bankrupt finances of France by issuing paper money on the
credit of the state, up to twice the value of the national reserves in precious
metals and land. A central banking system was necessary and eventually
established. The idea was basically sound, but in the end the entire system
collapsed because of overspeculation by all of the people in Law's
additional scheme of establishing a company to develop the Mississippi
basin in America. In 1721 France had perhaps the world's worst stock
market crash, as the leading value of stock in that Mississippi development
company fell from 12,000 livres to 200. Durant (Ref. 54) says that the
Regency was, morally, the most shameful period in the history of France.
Religion disgraced itself by having immoral men at the top; government
was corrupt by having immoral men throughout.

In 1707 almost 70,000 cattle were sold annually in Paris and later in the
century there were some 21,000 horses in the city. By 1717 the capital h-ad
about 500,000 people, the third largest city in Europe, but the streets were
narrow and crowded, the noise deafening and the smells from human
excrement dumped from windows and piles of manure and slaughtered
animal carcasses were unbelievable. When the Swiss guards prevented
Parisians from relieving themselves under a row of yews in the Tuileries,
they simply went to the banks of the Seine, which was just as bad. Straw
was put daily on the streets and the old straw pulled up and simply dumped
in the river. Af ter midnight, when the candle lamps on the streets went out
they became very dangerous. The same situation could be found in all
towns, large and small. A bathroom in a house was a rare luxury. Fleas, lice
and bugs conquered Paris as well as London and other European cities.
(Ref. 260) High society was consumed with gambling - pharaoh, dominoes,
checkers and chess were all played for high stakes. (Ref. 292) An average
of 20,000 people died in Paris every year, even after the 1780s, some 4,000

of them ending their days in the poor-house. 7,000 to 8,000 children out of
about 30,000 births were abandoned and depositing these at the poor-house
became an occupation in itself. Hardly anyone in Paris took baths and those
that did confined them to one or two a year. (Ref. 260)

Mass consumption of low quality wine became commonplace, even at the
times of famine and drunkenness was everywhere. In the country the
peasants were poverty stricken and there were a series of disastrous harvests
between 1773 and 1789. Overall there were at least 16 general famines
during the century as well as numerous local ones. The last great western
European plague epidemic occurred in Marseilles in 1720 (but it continued
in eastern Europe). (Ref. 131, 260) While glass was used in window-panes
in Paris, oiled paper was still used for windows in Lyons and various
provinces. But even in the midst of relative squalor, France began to set the
fashion for dress for the whole of Europe. Dressed French mannequin dolls
were sent far and wide for dressmakers to copy and one aspect of progress
was the extension of decently surfaced highways. (Ref. 260)

The larger towns continued to have fairs and sometimes the latter simply
took over the former. The modern day "rock" concerts may have been
foreshadowed by some of these. At times 50,000 people would invade a
town and it took all the police available to keep a semblance of order. "Fairs
meant noise, tumult, music, popular rejoicing, the world turned upside
down, disorder”[footnote]. At about the same time there were allegedly
91,000 persons without homes, except temporary shacks, and without
visible means of support. (Ref. 292) There was a huge volume of road
transport as well as canal traffic. The waterway network was incomplete,
requiring many portages. Between the Lyons and the Rhone rivers alone
some 400 to 500 oxen teams were employed permanently.

Quotation from Braudel (Ref. 292), page 85

But to return to government affairs, when Louis XV matured he was more
concerned with chasing women than government and continued the "Grand
Monarchy", oblivious to the restless ideas developing in the populous. For
at least a decade of his tenure, France was in essence ruled by his mistress,
Mme. de Pompadour, born Jeanne Poisson and one of the most remarkable
women of history. She had an extensive influence on French and European

art as well as government and it was the period when French influence
reached the peak of its effect on European civilization. Pompadour helped
pave the way for the ultimate expulsion of the Jesuits from France and
played a part in the Seven Years War. In that encounter, France helped
Austria, on the losing side, and due to its extension in North America,
France lost Canada to England and also lost territory in India. That was the
time of the Swiss Rousseau, who did much of his writing in France,
eulogizing the life of primitive man and it was also the period of Voltaire,
the great Mocker, born Francois Marie Arouet, playwright, poet, historian,
philosopher and confidant of kings and Voltaire actually spent some time in
the Bastille because of a poem he wrote about the Regent and his daughter,
the Duchess de Berri, But there is much misconception about the Bastille. It
was actually a luxurious prison and incarceration there carried no particular
dishonor. Most prisoners were aristocrats or gentlemen, who were treated
there according to their rank. (Ref. 131) Other famous men of the century
included Boucher, known for his nude paintings, Chardin, who depicted a
still healthy France in labor and family life and Quentin de La Tour, who
painted the leading personalities of the age. Charles Louis de Montesquieu
was a powerful novelist, influencing religion and government. Denis
Diderot and D'Alembert published Encyclopedie, in 1750. This taught
Europe the meaning of such things as "rights", authority", "liberty",
"equality", etc., and gave a tremendous storehouse of knowledge.

From the military standpoint perhaps nothing was more important to France
than the development in the middle of the century, by Jean Maritz and his
son, of the technique of casting cannon as a solid piece of metal and then
boring out the barrel. The advantages of these guns, with straight and
uniform bores, were enormous; Safety, accuracy, lightness (less thickness
and thus more maneuverability) and reliability were all enhanced. The
closer fit of cannonball to gun tube also meant less "windage" allowance
and a smaller powder charge could be used to obtain even greater velocity.
Using these features, Jean Baptiste Vacquette de Gribeaval created a
powerful field artillary previously unknown in Europe. (Ref. 279)

A thumb-nail sketch of life in France before the revolution may be of value.
One basic conflict involved the effort of philosophers and others to end
ecclesiastical control over education. The great majority of the peasants

could not read and even in the colleges the curriculum paid little attention to
advances of knowledge; studies were almost entirely religious. The French
Revolution can be traced back to the ambitious absurdities of Monarchy,
but also to the revolt of reason against Catholic Christianity as it existed
then in the nation. Although the lower classes, still dominated by the
church, led moral lives for the most part, this was not true in the aristocracy.
Adultery was usual, as a substitute for divorce. Children were seldom seen
by their aristocratic parents; men were slaves to women, women to fashion,
and fashion was determined by couturiers. The French language had now
become the second language of every educated European. Frederick the
Great used it regularly, except to his troops. Gibbon wrote his first books in
French. (Ref. 54) Between 1715 and 1771, French foreign trade, previously
very low, increased eightfold. (Ref. 8) By the end of the century there was
no shortage of money, at least in some parts of France. In Marseilles, for
example, men who offered money at 5% found few takers. Of course in
France, even at this late period, merchants who borrowed money were
looked at with some suspicion. (Ref. 292)

In the reign of Louis XVI, in 1789, the king's treasury was empty, however,
in spite of high taxes, which were born by the middle class and peasants and
the king found it necessary to call a National Assembly in an effort to find
new sources of money. The Assembly traditionally was composed of
nobles, clergy and the "third estate" (middle class), each group to have, in
effect, one vote. Since it was apparent that the non-tax paying nobles and
clergy could thus dominate the assembly, the third estate withdrew, held
their own meeting and vowed to give France a constitution and a reform
administration. Mobs in Paris took up the new cause and storming the
Bastille to obtain arms, originally just to protect themselves, they more or
less inadvertently started the French Revolution - a revolution of the
"common man" against the monarchy, the nobles and the clergy. From 1789
to 1791 the revolution held its own and France was a limited monarchy with
the king kept virtually a prisoner in a diminished state in the Tuileries,
while the National Assembly, now reorganized as to voting privileges, ruled
the country with relative peace. The Assembly instituted reforms in the
penal code, stopped heresy persecutions, opened the army ranks to all,
while arranging a state administration for the church. The heads of the
church were prohibited from being members of the Assembly, however, and

this actually weakened the central government. One of the great, farsighted
statesmen of that period was Mirabeau, but unfortunately he died in 1791
and extremists then began to take control.

In that same year of 1791 the royal family escaped and tried to join a loyal
army on the east border, but they were identified and returned to Paris under
guard. The extremist Jacobins - Robespierre, Danton and Marat - now
began to dominate French affairs, with their advanced ideas. Robespierre
was a disciple of Rousseau and himself a lawyer; Danton was a lawyer; and
Marat was a scientist and medical man of sorts. The mobs of the streets
absorbed their radical ideas. At the same time, France declared war on
Austria for a strange mixture of reasons and then Prussia declared war on
France "to restore the monarchy". The Jacobin "commune" imprisoned
King Louis XVI and reconvened the Assembly to frame a constitution.
With the Prussians advancing, however, the mobs took over, emptied the
prisons and a general slaughter began. A French army stopped the Prussians
at Valmy, but the bloody fighting on the streets of Paris continued. The
National Convention proclaimed France a republic and in a few months
Louis was beheaded. Wild with success the mobs formed armies dedicated
to "republicanizing" all Europe and while singing the Marseillaise they
spread out to Brussels, Holland, Savoy, Switzerland and south Germany and
they declared war on England. Under their new general, Napoleon
Bonaparte, a brilliant young artillery officer, the republican armies fought
forces of Savoy and Austria in 1796 and won most of northern Italy. In
addition, however, war continued at home between the republicans and the
loyalists and the double war provided the fear and panic that made it easy
for the Jacobins[footnote] to institute the reign of terror. While the
Constituent Assembly had been discussing the Declaration of the rights of
man, food crises and food riots occupied most of the common people.
While a construction laborer earned 18 sous a day, his wife had to pay 14
1/2 sous for a 4 pound loaf of bread. This has ever been perhaps both the
cause and the result of revolution. (Ref. 211) Attempts of the monarchy to
use government troops against civilian crowds created an awkward
situation, as a volley of muskets at close range was murderous and there
was yet no other method of crowd control. The French custom of having
aristocratic officers, who traditionally kept considerable distance from their
men made it easy for the non-coms and regular soldiers to rebel and support

the new regime against the old. After Napoleon took control, enlistment in
the army was an escape from the very high unemployment which was part
of the over-population problem of the country. (Ref. 273)

The Jacobins were a political club named after their meeting place, a
Dominican monastery. Jacobin was the Parisian name for Dominican. (Ref.
38)

All royalists were eventually slaughtered and Robespierre ruled with blood,
consumed by a passion for a new order of life. He attempted to equalize
property and abolish profit. Divorce was made easy and illegitimacy was
approved. A new calendar was made. But somewhere in all this Robespierre
became insane and was finally killed by his own group. The terror came to
an end after 4,000 people had been executed. A new constitution of 1795
provided that France should be ruled by a two-house legislature and five
executives known as Directors. A rapid recovery of market-regulated
economic activity took place.

After his Italian victories, Bonaparte took an army to the Mediterranean,
invaded and initially conquered a part of Egypt. He did this by making the
Directory believe that he was indirectly attacking England by breaking their
lifeline, but it is probable that the real reason for that peculiar move was
locked into Napoleon's own dream of empire. He took scholars and
scientists with him and these men did start the science of Egyptology,
initiate the breaking of the old hieroglyphics' code and made some striking
reforms in Egyptian public health. A combination of some reinforcement
Turkish armies and a British fleet under Lord Nelson cut off Napoleon's
ships and forces, however, and only he managed to escape to France at the
end of 1799. In spite of leaving his men behind, he still managed to arrive
as a hero, took over the Directory and conferred the administrative power to
three consuls.

The French Revolution brought down the European Old Regime. Neither
the previously existing radical ideas nor new technical processes could have
transformed European society so rapidly and so fundamentally. In the last
decades of the old regime, Russia and eastern Europe were drawing abreast
of the political organization of other European states and were on the verge
of tipping the scales eastward. The revolution changed this drift. Of course

it was costly. Approximately 600,000 French soldiers died between 1792
and 1799, the survivors remaining outside France, living on plunder.

At the end of the century several great scientists emerged in spite of the
turmoil. Laennec developed the stethoscope, Pierre Simon Laplace was a
great astronomer and statesman and Lavoisier worked out a new theory of
combustion and conservation of matter in chemical reactions while
repeating many of Priestley's oxygen experiments with a better
understanding of their meaning. Theophile de Bordeu held that the stomach,
heart and brain each secreted a material to the blood stream necessary for
health and thus became known as a pioneer in endocrinology. Dentistry
became a separate, true profession with the work of Pierre Fauchard. His
publication The Surgeon Dentist became a standard text for generations.
(Ref. 125)

THE NETHERLANDS AND BELGIUM

At the beginning of the century Holland built ships for all of Europe and we
have seen how Peter the Great of Russia not only went there to personally
learn shipbuilding but then transported a number of Hollanders to Russia to
establish shipyards there. In 1717 with 600,000 people[footnote],
Amsterdam was the second largest city in Europe. (Ref. 131) It was a
beautiful city but had one bad district, the Jordaan in the southwest, where
foundations were poor and canals too narrow. Jewish immigrants (Marranos
from Portugal and Spain) and French Huguenots all congregated there.
(Ref. 260) The great Amsterdam Exchange Building was finished in the
preceding century and now up to 4,500 people were said to "crush" inside
about noon every day. It was the busiest exchange in Europe, while the city,
itself, was the center of the Amsterdam-London-Paris-Geneva banking
supremacy. (Ref. 292)

Braudel (Ref. 260) says that Amsterdam had only 200,000 at the end of this
century. This only demonstrates the uncertainty of population estimates

William of Orange, also king of England, died in 1702 without children and
that ended the direct line of the House of Orange. The office of stadtholder
and commander-in chief was allowed to pass into obeyance and

Marlborough of England was appointed Deputy Captain-General of
Holland. In 1704, with Holland's consent, that Duke of Marlborough
penetrated Germany clear to the Danube just north of Munich, with British
paid soldiers. At that point he joined forces with armies of Eugene of Savoy
and Austria. The purpose was to strike at Bavaria, which was then an ally of
France, and then take Vienna. In the great battle of Blenheim, the French
lost 40,000 men and the terror of the French armies was broken. At home
the Dutch Republic finally succumbed under the financial burden of
protecting itself during the coalition wars against Louis XIV. Bearing the
lion's share of the Anglo-Dutch army between 1689 and 1713, it had to
abandon naval superiority to the English. After the Peace of Utrecht (1713)
England reaped the profits of the opening up of Spanish America and the
Dutch sank to the level of a second rate power. Again in 1743, however, the
Hollanders had to join England and Austria against Russia and France,
because of direct threats by France in the Austrian Netherlands. Holland's
small population and scant natural resources were inadequate to support the
status of a great power for long. By 1784 there was a three-way struggle
going on in Holland for control. The middle class and the patrician families,
who controlled the Estates General, were trying to eliminate a great part of
the traditional powers of the stadtholder. In 1787 Prussian troops intervened
and restored the stadtholder to even greater powers than before. (Ref. 8)

When the French revolutionists moved into Holland, however, Dutch
independence was lost as the French took Amsterdam (1795) while the
Dutch fleet was captured while it lay frozen in harbor ice.

The greatest intellectual achievement in Holland in this century was
probably in medicine. The medical school at Leiden had two of the great
teachers of the times in Hermann Boerhaave and the anatomist Bernhard
Siegfried Albinus. Their students became the leaders in the profession all
over Europe. (Ref. 125)

The Treaty of Utrecht, which ended the War of the Spanish Succession in
1713 also ended a long series of Spanish-French wars over Belgium and
that country then went under Austrian Habsburg rule as part of the Holy
Roman Empire. Economic recovery followed so that by 1787 the people
felt strong enough to revolt against Emperor Joseph II and the Republic of

the United Belgian Provinces was formed in 1790. In the same year,
however, the emperor re-conquered the country. After the French
Revolution, Belgium was incorporated into France (1799) in spite of
resistance of Hanoverian, Prussian, Austrian, and Hessian forces.

BRITISH ISLES

ENGLAND AND WALES

The population of England and Wales grew to over 9 million by the end of
this century. (Ref. 279) With the death of King William in 1702, Mary's
sister Anne reigned until 1714 in a time known as the Augustan Age of
England, because of the literature of Pope, Swift, Addison and others. This
was also the time when the Duke of Marlborough defeated a French army in
part of the War of the Spanish Succession, in which England gained
Gibralter, Nova Scotia and Newfoundland. Parliament became the supreme
power in the state and on Anne's death, decided to pick a less competent
monarch, choosing the Elector of Hanover, George I, who could speak no
English and would not learn to do so. He spent most of his time in Hanover
and there was no love shared between him and the English people. The
Great Northern War was in progress and George I decided that Sweden
must make peace with Denmark and the German states so that then they
could drive Russia from the Baltic. After English money and the Royal
Navy had induced a Swedish-Danish peace treaty on July 3, 1720, a large
armada was sent into the Baltic, but never did actually engage in battle. The
British involvement faded when the South Sea Company and its stock
collapsed, as will be described in a later paragraph. It was at that time that
Sir Robert Walpole, the Whig leader and the first prime minister and master
politician, used adroit maneuvers to solve the financial crisis. (Ref. 131)
The monarchy and the House of Commons both lost power at that time as
the House of Lords ruled England.

There was a period of increased overseas expansion in America (Canada)
and India as the result of England's participation and France's losses in the

Seven Years War. Winston Churchill (Ref. 31) insists on calling this the
First World War because there were sea battles with France in all parts of
the globe, as well as land battles in Germany and in America. Although
George II had taken over the throne in 1727 and was more active in British
affairs than his father had been, England's leader was William Pitt the Elder,
Secretary of State, who ran the war from his office in London. Although
having initial losses in America to the combined forces of the French and
their Indian allies, by 1759 the British navy had captured Guadeloupe, the
richest island in the west Indies, the army of Amherst had taken
Ticonderoga and Fort Niagra and the combined services had obtained the
key fortress of Quebec. In another year, the French were out of North
America. King George II died in 1760 and George III preferred the minister
Bute over Pitt. France, seeing that Pitt was losing influence, made a new
alliance with Spain, hoping to again have a chance in America. Upon Pitt's
resignation, England declared war on Spain and further victories resulted,
including the taking of Manila. At the Peace of Paris in 1763, British
acquisitions were considerable, although the naval power of France had
been left untouched and she retained bases in the Gulf of St. Lawrence.
(Ref. 31)

At home important changes took place in agriculture, farming and
transportation. Rural life in England up to about 1715 was very much as it
had been for a thousand years, each household being a self -contained
economic unit. But things changed as a factory system made England the
workshop of the world and machines began to take the place of workers.
The steam engine, invented by James Watts of Glasgow in 1760, was of
new design, having the piston driven by live steam. That, with the use of
coke in the steel industry and the development of steamships and railways,
all had a part in the Industrial Revolution. Wood had up to that time been
the major fuel, but by the end of the century only four of the original 69
great forests of England remained and there was great need of a newer and
cheaper fuel. Coal was the answer and new mining methods could be
developed which in turn led to better production of steel. Iron smelting was
changed by Abraham Darby, who mixed sulfur with Shropshire valley coal,
making coke and it was this that let England become the world's leading
iron manufacturer after 1760. (Ref. 213) These changes had not come
overnight. For example, a blast furnace built in Dolgyne in Wales in 1717

was not fired until 5 years later when enough charcoal had been
accumulated for 361/2 weeks work. Newcommen invented the atmospheric
steam engine in 1711, but only one was in operation in England 30 years
later. Thousands of factors hindered progress. What would happen to the
labor force when machines took over? (Ref. 260) In 1728 the first steel
rolling mill was set up and in 1740 Benjamin Huntsman invented the
crucible process for making high-grade steel. This union of coal and iron
made the great machines of the Industrial Revolution possible. (Ref. 54)
Similarly in textile production, there was John Kay's "flying shuttle" (1733)
and Lewis Paul's spinning machine (1738) which in this era revolutionized
that field. The Industrial Revolution began in England and occurred only in
England in this century. In the reign of George III the structure of British
economy and society in general underwent profound change, manifested
first by the tremendous output of coal, pig-iron, engineering products and
textiles, as already noted. But the economic growth was furthered by the
fortunate availability of cheap water transport in inland

waterways| footnote] for the newly manufactured heavy, bulky goods and a
shipping fleet of 658,000 tons, which was to triple within the next 50 years.
(Ref. 213) McNeill (Ref. 279) reminds us of a fact of ten overlooked in that
the iron and steel production in Great Britain was basically stimulated by
the governments’ need for naval cannon and other military hardware. In the
decade after 1794 the British government purchased about 1/5 of the
ironmasters' products[ footnote]. In essentially the same period, the Royal
Navy made two important technical advancements - copper sheathing for
ships' bottoms and the use of short-barreled, large caliber guns called
"carronades", which were extremely effective at short ranges. Another plus
for England was that except for two minor revolts (Jacobite), she fought her
18th century wars abroad and left the homeland free for industrial
development. Her foreign trade trebled between 1702 and 1772. (Ref. 8)
There were 4,250 miles of inland waterways, all developed privately or by
stock companies. (Ref. 213)

50% of E1ritish iron was used for horseshoes. (Ref. 8)

Perhaps the most fundamental difference between social patterns of Britain
and the continent was the greater prestige and autonomy which merchants
and financiers enjoyed in the former. The interpenetration of the landed
nobility and the merchant class in England resulted in availability of large

amounts of capital and a remarkable economic growth. Toleration of
religious nonconformity also helped. The liberties of Englishmen,
expressed in chronic effervescence of parliamentary (and extraneous)
debate, confirmed by economic and imperial success, contrasted the
deferential obedience demanded by European monarchs. (Ref. 213)

One must not assume, however, that there were no troubles. England
created two societies, remote from each other. The first was the society
made up of modest country gentlemen and the other was the urban
conglomerate, with plenty of animal spirits and not much civilization. (Ref.
33) With somewhere between 750,000 and 860,000 inhabitants London was
the largest city in Europe[footnote] but a considerable part of the population
was packed into slums filthy with garbage and offal, breeding a hundred
diseases. In some sections nearly 50% lived by charity, theft or prostitution.
64% of the children died before reaching 10 years of age. There was not a
single bathing establishment in London, even in 1800. Education was very
spotty and the great majority of Englishmen could not read or write.
Drinking and gambling were rampant with the typical London man
consuming a quart of beer or ale a day. 5 1/2 million gallons of gin were
consumed in Britain in 1735. Soldiers were all given alcohol before battle
and became habitual drinkers. An English military doctor of 1763 even felt
that wine and alcohol helped to suppress certain diseases and were
indispensable for the good health of the troops. In spite of that, improved
farming machinery and methods such as fallowing led to improved diets
and then to a population increase. (Ref. 140) In the 1770s some 8,000,000
pounds| footnote] of tea were consumed in England and by the end of the
century the English were consuming 2 pounds per person, per annum.
Catsup (or ketchup) came to England via India from Chinese immigrants to
Southeast Asia. The word comes from the Siamese Kachiap. (Ref. 211)
England's total population was at about 8,000,000. (Ref. 213)

One pound of tea makes almost 300 cups. (Ref. 211)

On the government level piracy was still tolerated and the slave trade by
English ships still flourished. And even as now, the lawmakers of England
had been so eager to protect the individual from the state that many worried
that they were failing to protect society from the individual. The machinery
of enforcement broke down before the spread and organization of crime. As

in France, a stock exchange in London was established at the turn of the
century and again, as in France, there was a market crash in 1720, as the
South Sea Company went into bankruptcy.

In some degree history does repeat itself. Just as today labor fears the
increase in automation, so in the 18th century the development of machines
led to serious labor reactions. We have mentioned John Kay's invention of
the "flying shuttle" which doubled the weaving output and increased
quality, but now we must add that angry mobs broke up his house and he
died in poverty, in France. Similarly, James Hargreaves of the spinning
jenny fame, had his house sacked, his first machine burned and he also had
to flee. (Ref. 213) Still another phenomenon appeared that remains with us
today - bitter arguments over the mounting national debt. The entire
economic system depended on the "credit-worthiness" of the state and it
could continue to exist only if Parliament created new sources of revenue
earmarked for regular payment of the interest on the debt. As a result
certain people, land-owners particularly, had high taxes levied, while others,
money lenders, renters, and business men, whose incomes were not taxed,
gained whenever the state borrowed more money and the interest rate was
raised. Braudel (Ref. 292) says that this latter group actually promoted the
1739 war with Spain.

As to philosophy and religion, Britain preceded continental Europe both in
the collapse of the old feudal system and the near collapse of the Christian
religion. The Established Church was rent by all varieties of dissenting
sects and perhaps hit hardest of all by the campaign of the Deists to reduce
Christianity to a belief in God and immortality only.

Thomas Woolston, Matthew Tendal, Conyers Middleton and others wrote,
spoke and ridiculed. The upper classes were predominately counter-
religious and the lower classes in great part had no religion at all, even
though there were state penalties for being absent from church, a statute
seldom enforced. Not more than 5 or 6 members of the House of Commons
went to church. The Anglican clergy seldom mentioned heaven or hell and
stressed social virtues rather than other-worldliness. In this setting flowered
Methodism, founded by John and Charles Wesley, with a few friends,
especially George Whitefield, as they organized a little group of 15 students

and teachers at Oxford, resolved to practice Christianity with "Methodical"
thoroughness. All were devout Anglicans and most became Anglican
clergy. On a trip to Georgia as a missionary, John was impressed by the
piety and creed of some Moravian Brothers and soon adopted some of their
intensity and ideas. In the next few years, Whitefield's and John Wesley's
emotional oratory and preaching and Charles' hymns took over lower class
England for Methodism. They preached essentially the old Puritan Creed
with the message of sin and repentance, a faith based on fear, not love, but
they gave an ethical code that shared in the moral rehabilitation of England
in the 2nd half of the century. By the time of John Wesley's death there were
79,000 followers in England and 40,000 in the United States. By 1957 there
were 40,000,000 Methodists all over the world. Methodism placed all hopes
on faith in the great conflict between reason and faith. (Ref. 54) By the end
of the 18th century there were 20,000 Jews in London, hated and given little
or no opportunities. (Ref. 260)

Literature and music continued to flourish. In addition to the early century
writers mentioned at the beginning of this section, there were Henry
Fielding, who wrote the well known Tom Jones in 1730, Thomas Gray,
known particularly for his "Elegy in a Country Courtyard", the caustic
Samuel Johnson, and the transplanted Scottish philosopher and historian,
David Hume. We should not omit mention of Handel's music| footnote].
George Frederic Handel was born in Halle, Germany, but moved to England
in 1712 at age 27

The first medical school in London was founded by William Hunter,
interested primarily in dentistry and obstetrics. His delivery of various
members of the royal family helped to raise obstetrics from its medieval
obscurity. William's brother, John Hunter, was even more famous as a
surgeon and was a student of two other famous surgeons, William
Cheselden and Percival Pott. John Hunter developed a method of closing
off an aneurysm, thus preventing the necessity for amputation of limbs of
thousands of soldiers and civilians. The surgeons finally achieved equality
with their traditional rivals, the physicians. Most prominent among the
latter was William Heberden, who described angina pectoris and nodules of
osteoarthritis of the fingers, which still bear his name. The most important
drug development was digitalis, used for "dropsy" by William Withering in

1785. James Lind, a British naval surgeon, proved the efficacy of fresh
lemons and oranges in curing scurvy in 1753, but the Admiralty did not act
until 1795 and even then used cheap, West Indies' limes (rather than the
Mediterranean variety), and these lacked the necessary Vitamin C. Thus,
scurvy outbreaks continued on British ships for another 100 years, although
the mortality rate did decrease. (Ref. 125, 211)

In spite of the medical advances small-pox remained widespread and highly
virulent, with mortality ranging from 15 to 30%. Throughout this century
there were only 9 years in which small-pox deaths in London did not
exceed 1,000 and in 1759 they reached 3,296. One-third of the inhabitants
of England bore pit marks of that disease. The idea of inoculation by pus
from a true small-pox lesion was brought from Turkey by Lady Mary
Wortley Montagu and was used for a short time, but was then dropped as
too dangerous. It was at the end of the century in 1798 that Edward Jenner
published his famous paper on the use of cow-pox for vaccination. Typhus
fever occurred sporadically in mild epidemics. Scarlet fever increased in
incidence and by 1750 one out of every 30 cases died. A severe epidemic of
that occurred in 1777-1778. In spite of all this, life expectancy of 35 years
in England was much better than the overall world expectancy of 25 to 30
years. (Ref. 214, 140, 125, 213)

The War of American Independence was precipitated by the poor policies
of ministers such as Grenville and Charles Townshend, but George III's
responsibility for the final breach is not to be denied. (Ref. 31) Simple in
tastes and unpretentious in manner, his mind was still Hanoverian, with an
inveterate obstinacy and stubbornness. He could not understand those who
feared the consequences of a policy of coercion. Edmund Burke, Secretary
to the Marquis of Rockingham, brought the Whig party to stand for
conciliation of the colonies as well as relaxation of restraints on the trade of
his native Ireland, but the king was not convinced and after 13 months he
got rid of Rockingham's government. William Pitt, now ill, went along with
the king and Townshend returned to power, with the final result being war.
As it progressed the British General Burgoyne's defeat in October of 1777
at Saratoga influenced France, supposedly neutral up until that time, to ally
itself with the colonists. The French brought their intact navy up to the line
and started a war of revenge against Britain to overcome the sting of the

recent Seven Years War. (Ref. 31) The revolt of the colonies had shattered
England's complacency and the word "reform" was in the air. William Pitt
the Younger came to power at age 24 in 1783 and in the next 10 years he
tried mightily to stay clear of Europe's upheavals, while he improved the
financial, administrative and supply organization of the Royal Navy.

Scotland

The death of the widowed King William left the crowns of both England
and Scotland to his sister-in-law Anne. Under some duress by restrictive
trade decrees against Scotland, in 1707 a treaty was concluded producing a
formal union of the two countries, with a common parliament. But the
English continued to harass the Scots.

A Scots proposal to build roads into the Highlands to exploit their great
timber resources was rejected by the English, as they continued to import
wood from America. English coal could be exported duty free to Ireland,
but not to Scotland. Poverty remained endemic but cultivation of the potato
on the Stirling plain after 1739 and an increase in the breeding of black
cattle began to offer hope for recovery. In the Highlands a warrior society
still existed, tribal at the bottom, almost feudal at the top, all using their
ancient Gaelic language and existing on the black cattle economy.

The Act of Union joining the two countries did not prevent an occasional
resurgence of Scottish national pride and attempts at forcing a new Stuart
king on to the throne of Britain. Bonnie Prince Charlie, Catholic son of
James III, spent his life trying, with interval help from France and various
Scot clans, and he even invaded England with an army of about 10,000 in
1745 - the Jacobite Rebellion. It all came to naught and after the
Highlanders’ defeat at Culloden, Gaelic Scotland was broken, as the clans
were dissolved, the bagpipe banned in war and the kilt outlawed. At the end
of that f inal battle, the English killed all the wounded on the field, shot and
hung fugitives and burned houses. Many Celtic Scots emigrated to Nova
Scotia (New Scotland). (Ref. 194) In spite of that bloodbath, it is amazing
that trade, industry and arts made a rapid and substantial recovery. At the

end of the century the economy was helped as iron foundries started up,
with contracts from the British navy. (Ref. 279)

Every parish in Scotland tried to set up a school for its children and 4
universities offered the best education in the British Isles. Another student
of Boerhaave of Leiden (see page 969), Alexander Monro, returned to his
native Scotland to give new life to the ancient University of Edinburgh,
which became the center of medical instruction for the English speaking
world. (Ref. 125) This century has been called the era of "Scottish
Enlightenment", with the philosophers David Hume and Thomas Reid,
historian William Robertson, political economist Adam Smith, novelist Sir
Walter Scott, who was born and educated in Edinburgh, and finally Robert
Burns (1759-1796), who wrote some in English, but whose poems in
Scottish have brought him everlasting fame. (Ref. 170)

IRELAND

Ireland had a far different situation from Scotland. As a result of repeated
victories by English armies over native revolts, a code of laws had been set
up that chained the Irish in body and soul. (Ref. 54) The landowners were
almost all Protestants, most of them actually living in England and those
who resided locally isolated themselves from the hostility of their
surroundings with drink, quarreling, dueling and gambling. The Established
(Anglican) Church in Ireland included only about 1/7 of the people, but was
supported by tithes from the peasantry, almost all Catholics. The latter were
excluded from public office, from all professions except medicine, could
purchase no land or hold any valuable lease. Emigration continued with
about 8,000 Irish going to America each year in the 8th decade. (Ref. 260)

At the end of the century in 1798 a revolt broke out again in the country,
which was put down by Lord Cornwallis, in spite of French assistance to
the Irish. (Ref. 110) The

British leaders then decided to make Ireland- a part of the United Kingdom.
An Act of Union was passed in 1800, which made all of the British Isles a
single entity of Great Britain. The social pattern in Ireland resembled that of

eastern Europe and the southern American colonies, in having a privileged
body of landowners, who shared European civilization and a culturally
deprived, psychologically alienated mass of agricultural laborers. (Ref. 139)
One helpful feature at the century end was a rise in grain prices in England,
which made the Irish potato culture more profitable and necessary. (Ref.
140)

SCANDINAVIA

Coming from England, the potato reached Scandinavia in this century. (Ref.
8)

NORWAY

Still under Danish rule, Norway was rapidly developing a sea trade and
shipping industry, with particularly close commercial ties with England.
Norway's chief contribution to the literature of the period was Ludvig
Holberg, who wrote a number of comedies to be played in the first theater
in Denmark.

SWEDEN

Since Sweden was occupied almost entirely in the early century with war,
we Shall first continue our special section on that war.

After termination of the Great Northern War, political power in Sweden
shifted to the lower nobility and the rich merchants, who were prospering in
trade and industry, exploiting the mineral resources of the country. The
parliament became the center of political life, but it soon took on dishonest
ways and fell in prestige so that Gustavus III became an absolute ruler once
more in a golden interlude of intellectualism and art (1771-1792). In the
meantime the Hats, a political party under French influence, had provoked
another war against Russia, but after two years Sweden was again the loser
and had lost still more territory in Finland.

Great men of Sweden in this century were Karl von Linn (Linnaeus), who

established the modern binomial system of naming plants and animals and
Anders Celsius, astronomer at the University of Uppsala. He also devised

the centigrade scale thermometer.

DENMARK

Some repetition of the material concerning the Great Northern War will be
apparent, in this section. In 1699 Frederick IV, aged 28 years, had ascended
to the throne of Denmark and with Peter the Great of Russia, aged 27 years
and Augustus of Poland, 29, formed an alliance to obtain revenge for the
actions of Sweden's 17 year old king, Karl XII. On the alliance's declaration
of war, however, Karl immediately attacked Denmark, starting the Great
Northern War. Sweden easily won those initial battles and continued
conquering throughout eastern Europe for the next 10 years, as we have
noted above.

After Karl was defeated at Poltava, however,-Frederick once more led
Denmark and Norway into war on land and sea and the final peace did not
come until 1721. The European powers at the peace table would not return
both sides of the Sound to Denmark, because of the old grievance of the
Sound Dues and they let Sweden keep Scania.

Frederick IV encouraged intellectual life, subsidizing the Norwegian poet
and playwright, Ludvig Holberg. With budding intellectual life, industry
also developed, including the still famous Royal Copenhagen Porcelain
factory. After Frederick's death in 1728, a great fire swept Copenhagen in
the reign of Christian VI. The latter was followed by Frederick V, who
married the daughter of Britain's George II. Upon Frederick V's death in
1765 his mentally ill son became Christian VII, married to Caroline
Matilda, sister of George III of England. Christian's physician, Struensee,
became an all-powerful minister for a short period, but Andreas Peter
Bernstorff replaced him as chief minister in 1773. After 1784 Christian's
son and successor Frederick VI acted as regent and put through wide
reforms, including the liberation of peasants from serfdom, clearing the way
for the breaking up of large land-holdings and allowing improvements in

farming methods. In 1792 Denmark became the first European country to
prohibit the slave trade. Of interest is the fact that it was a Dane, Vitus
Bering, who explored the northern seas and oceans for the Russian navy in
the first half of the century. (Ref. 117, 38)

FINLAND

Sweden continued to rule Finland, but in 1713-1714, as a part of the Great
Northern War, Russians conquered the entire south coast of Finland, using
newly made galleys some 80 to 100 feet long with a single mast and sail
and numerous benches for oarsmen. They moved in and out along the
shore, out of reach of the Swedish men-of-war. Occasionally, when
necessary, the galleys would grapple and use hand to hand battle on the
decks of the great ships of the line. During this short period much of the
Finnish population fled to the Aland Islands, lying between Finland and
Sweden. Those islands, however, were soon also infiltrated by the Russian
galleys. In the end, as noted above, Finland proper was returned to the
control of Sweden. The Finns themselves were basically poor peasant
farmers. Their houses and other farm buildings were wooden huts with little
in the way of accessories. At the end of the century Russia's continued push
against its frontiers resulted in a recurrent invasion into Finland (1790) at
the expense of the Swedes. (Ref. 131, 279)

OVERSEAS SCANDINAVIAN CENTERS

In Norway's "colony" of Iceland, there was a severe cold period, with
glaciers covering more of the land so that depopulation occurred. It was
mentioned in the introductory material in Chapter 3 (FIFTH AND
FOURTH MILLENIA B.C.) that Iceland sat on the mid-Atlantic ridge,
which marks the junction of two crustal tectonic plates. Beginning in 1724
volcanic fissures opened and spewed the spectacular "Myvatn Fires" over a
period of 5 years, pouring lava and destruction over a large area. (Ref. 105)

EASTERN EUROPE

The 18th century European surge in population did not put as much strain
on the food supply system in eastern Europe as it did in the west, where
easily used land had already been under cultivation for some time. In the
east there was still much untilled expanse which could be converted to
crops without costly capital improvements. As men became more abundant
it was also easier for Poland and Russia| footnote] to recruit more soldiers.
Russia, as a state on the margin of Europe, like Great Britain, was able to
increase control of resources more rapidly than was possible in the more
crowded center of Europe. (Ref. 279)

This was also true of Prussia and Austria

SOUTHERN BALTIC AREA

It will be recalled that the close of the last century saw almost the entire
southern shore of the Baltic in Swedish hands, with a debilitated Swedish
army in Livonia, after defeating the Russians at Narva and Poland as an
independent kingdom, ruled by the Saxon Elector, Augustus. Having put
what remained of his army in Livonia in winter quarters, Karl XII of
Sweden obtained 10,000 fresh recruits from the mother country in the
spring of 1701 and then marched with a total of 24,000 men south across
the West Divina River, near Riga, to defeat a Saxon army of 9,000 plus an
additional cadre of 4,000 Russians. Because Karl could not move his
cavalry across the river, which was some 650 yards wide, the Saxons,
although badly beaten and battered, retreated and got away. Karl then
decided on total defeat of Augustus, before invading Russia. Up to that time
Augustus had fought only as a Saxon and not as King- of Poland. Karl
wanted the Polish Diet to depose Augustus II and elect a new king, so he
waited patiently for that action. But it did not come and by that time it was
too late in the year for war in that cold climate, so he wintered his troops in
Courland. In January the Swedish army shif ted south into Lithuania and in
the spring of 1702 started the fight against Poland and Augustus I, which
was to last for 6 years. Behind the Swedes, Russian soldiers with Calmuck
and Cossack horsemen eventually completely overran and devastated
Livonia and the peasants were being bought and sold as serf s. Among the
prisoners taken was Martha Skavronskaya, a 17 year old, illiterate girl who

would join the house of Prince Menshikov, become Peter I's mistress, then
wife and finally the ruler of Russia as Catherine I.

By the end of 1704, after taking the Swedish held fort at the junction of
Lake Lagoda with the Neva, the Russians had taken both Narva in Estonia
and Dorpat in Livonia, giving Russia an entrance to the Baltic. (Ref. 131)
Meanwhile Karl XII had finally convinced the Polish to dethrone the
Saxon, Augustus, and under Swedish guns Stanislaus Leszczynski was
crowned King of Poland at Warsaw (not at Cracow, as tradionally). The
Swedish army then turned toward Russia (1705) while Augustus, disguised,
went by a circuitous route through Hungary to join Czar Peter and the
Russian forces. In the first battle at Grodno Karl forced the Russians to
retreat in disarray, but he could not follow because of a spring thaw and its
mud. The eventual defeat of the Swedish forces at Poltava, however, has
been described above in the special section on THE GREAT NORTHERN
WAR.

We have also previously reported that Karl XII obtained a new army of
18,000 men in 1712, landing in Swedish Pomerania with the intent to again
attack Russia. A Danish fleet caught a convoy of supply ships, sending 30
of them to the bottom of the Baltic.

The Swedish General Stenbock wheeled and attacked the Danes on the
west, winning the battle but losing 6,000 fighting men. He then marched on
west toward Hamburg. At Altona he demanded 100,000 thalers for
expenses and when the town could raise only 42,000, his men burned the
community to the ground.

At what might be called the half-way point of the Great Northern War, after
the Swedish defeat at Poltava in Russia, Poland became in effect a
possession of Russia and Augustus II was put back on the throne. Peter I
also arranged a marriage between Duke Frederick William, of Courland (a
nephew of Frederick of Prussia) to his niece Anna (daughter of his half-
brother Ivan). She soon became Duchess of Courland, as her young
husband died. We shall note later that she was also called back to Russia in
1730 to be Empress Anna Ivanovna. Also, in this interim, Peter's son Alexis
married the daughter of the Duke of Wolfenbuettel at the castle of the
Queen of Poland in 1711. (Ref. 131)

In about 1733 Russian and Saxon troops put young Augustus III on the
Polish throne. He had Austrian backing, but France, Spain and Sardinia
took up arms in the so-called War of the Polish Succession, in favor of the
deposed Stanislas Lesczynski. By 1738 Stanislas announced a renunciation
of the throne and Poland had reached a point of real political decay. (Ref.
119) Rich nobles still wielded much power, however, and Prince Radziwill
single-handedly raised his own army, equipped with artillery, in 1750. (Ref.
292) The body politic pulled itself together enough by 1764 upon the death
of Augustus III, to elect Stanislas II Poniatowski as king, but Catherine II of
Russia used religious divisions as a lever to foment more civil strife. In the
resulting war of 1768-1774, the Turks decided to help Poland, but Russia
still dominated and sliced off a portion of Poland (part of the first Polish
partition) and destroyed the Turkish Mediterranean fleet at Chesme. In the
midst of this was a Jewish persecution with thousands having to flee, some
to England. (Ref. 260) To complete that first partition Prussia took an area
of Poland between Danzig and Thorn, while Austria helped herself to a
large area just south of Cracow. A second partition of Poland took place in
1787-92 and finally in 1795 all of Poland was gobbled up, with Austria
taking Cracow, Prussia getting Warsaw and Russia occupying Vilna. On
that occasion Catherine IT of Russia was invited in by the greater nobles of
Poland. Life in that country was bad and superstition great. The starving
citizens of Kolberg would not touch a wagon load of potatoes sent to them
by Frederick the Great in 1774. (Ref. 211) The peasants were subjected to
the worst kind of serfdom. In Lower Silesia in 1.798 compulsory labor by
peasants was unlimited - that is, they could be forced to work 7 days a week
for an unlimited number of hours. Later in the century there was a
tremendous "floating" population of runaway serfs, impoverished
noblemen, indigent Jews and urban paupers, forming a sort of "anti-
society". (Ref. 292)

The unfortunate history of Poland through the ages seems due to multiple
factors, not the least of which was the constant antagonism between the
nobility and the crown, often subjected to various foreign pressures. The
Polish territory overlapped an area containing Russians in the east and an
area containing Germans in the west. The country was still abundant in
Jews but the majority of the people were Catholic. There were no great
cities and little trade and actually very little central authority. An arm of

Poland reached out to the sea at Danzig and this separated Prussia into two
halves, annoying Frederick II. Internal weakness was caused by obsolete
institutions and religious antagonism brought about by central intolerance to
both Protestantism on the western borders and orthodoxy in the great
Ukraine.

Map from Reference 97

The other Baltic states suffered about the same ultimate f ate as Poland.
Latvia and Lithuania were divided along with Poland in the various
partitions between 1772 and 1795. Estonia, devastated by Peter's armies
was then ruled by Russia for the next 200 years, although the culture of the
country remained Germanic. (Ref. 61, 225)

RUSSIA (Please see map in RUSSIA section, next chapter)

After his defeat by Swedish forces at Narva, Peter I immediately started to
rebuild his army and equipment. When he had been in England, he had
bought about 40,000 modern flintlocks with bayonets and he used those
remaining after the Narva battle as models, constructing 6,000 in 1701 and
turning out 40,000 a year by 1711. One-fourth of all the church bells in
Russia were melted down to make new cannons, with 20 new ones
available by May, 1701. In the next three years seven new iron works were
developed beyond the Urals, using good ore, perhaps even better than
Sweden's[footnote]. Peter received no help from Holland or the Habsburgs
in this period, because they were involved with most of the rest of Europe
in the War of the Spanish Succession. He did get some reassurance from his
old ally, Augustus II of Poland. However, when the allies defeated Sweden,
Russia got only Ingria and had to supply 15,000 to 20,000 infantrymen for
the Saxons, besides paying Augustus a war subsidy of 100,000 rubles a year
for 3 years.

By 1715 these iron works had produced some 13,000 cannons and by 1720
there was an annual output of 20,000 muskets. (Ref. 279)

During the 6 years that Karl XII of Sweden was fighting in Poland, Peter
had some small military successes, including the standing off of a Swedish

naval expedition at Archangel and some victories against the 7,800 Swedes
left to hold Livonia, taking some Swedish prisoners back to Moscow and
eventually completely destroying the rest of that Swedish army, using
savage Kalmuch and Cossack horsemen. In 1702, with a fleet of small gun-
boats built on the south shore of Lake Lagoda, the czar attacked a Swedish
squadron of three brigantines and three galleys, forcing the Swedes to
withdraw down the Neva River, leaving the great lake to the Russians. After
similar attacks the Swedes also had to with- draw from Lake Peipus, only to
return in 1703 and again be run out by the Russians.

Peter had gained his opening to the Baltic by taking Fort Noeteborg
(renamed Schluesselburg) and he soon controlled the ancient area of Ingria,
along with the area where he was soon to build a city, St. Petersburg, at the
mouth of the Neva. That city is at the same latitude as Hudson's Bay and
when built, New York was already 77 years old and Boston 73. The first
digging for the new city was in May, 1702 on Hare Island. Although still
occasionally under attack by Swedes, the new city received its f irst
merchant ships for trade in 1703. The hardships of building a fortress and a
city on the swamps were stupendous, requiring thousands of laborers, who
were drafted from all parts of the empire

Cossacks, Siberians, Tatars, Finns and Russians. Scurvy, dysentery, malaria,
etc. cut them down by the hundreds, perhaps overall some 30,000 dying.
All the stone and most of the timber and all food was imported from inland.
People, from nobles and merchants down to peasants, were forced there to
live. Fires were common and the czar himself of ten led the firefighters.
Floods were also frequent and devastating, with the entire town sometimes
under water. In the area around St. Petersburg, most of the original Finns
had been eliminated by war and plague[footnote] and Peter gave their land
to noblemen and officers who often then brought whole villages of peasants
to live there.

Moscow also suffered severely from the plague later in 1770 and 1790.
(Ref. 213)

The czar had to control Livonia and Estonia to safeguard his new city and
to accomplish this while still administering the entire country meant that he
had to travel constantly.

Except in winter, travel was extremely difficult and hazardous,- with rutted
or muddy roads, worn out bridges, crude ferries and fords and few fresh
horses. His whole concern was war and taxes to support war. The money
came from an increasing number of state monopolies, with the state taking
control of production and sale of innumerable commodities from alcohol to
chessmen, salt and furs[ footnote]. Many people revolted, some escaping to
the north and east to join the "old Believers", others even organized true
revolts, including a rebellion at Astrakhan and the uprising of the Bashkir
(semi-orientals between the Volga and the Urals), as well as the Don
Cossack revolt under Kondraty Bulavin. All were put down in one way or
another, the latter one with the help of other loyal Cossacks under Hetman
Maximov. For that, Maximov was later executed by Bulavin.

Thus, the later communism was not exactly new to the Russian people

In the interval af ter Peter defeated the Swedish king at Narva and after the
cessation of the War of the Spanish Succession, Peter tried to make deals
with any and every European power for help against further Swedish
advances, but he had no luck. And then Karl XII struck again with 26,000
of his own men and almost 42,000 men from Saxony, leaving the latter
country in August of 1707, going through Protestant Silesia. Ahead of that
army, however, in western Poland, Cossacks and Kalmuks had ridden,
laying waste the countryside and poisoning the wells with dead,
uncooperative Poles. All Russian soldiers were withdrawn from western
Poland to a line near Minsk. Then, while waiting for Karl's forces, Peter
married his Lithuanian, low-born mistress of many years, Martha
Skavronskaya, who had taken the name Ekaterina (Catherine). Karl came
relentlessly on through the winter over the frozen Vistula and soon captured
Grodno, leaving Poland and entering Lithuania. Then the tides of war
wavered toward one side and then the other, but gradually the battle lines
shifted more southward towards the Ukraine and away from Moscow.

This brought up again the thorny question of the shif ting allegiances of the
various Cossack and Ukranian peoples. The Hetman of one large group of
Cossacks was Ivan Stepanovich Mazeppa, born in the then Polish sector of
the Ukraine, well educated in Jesuit academies but orthodox in religion and
at one time a page at the court of King Jan Casimir of Poland. Mazeppa had
mixed loyalties, part to the new czar and part to his people, who had wanted

full Ukrainian independence in order to avoid Russian taxes, conscription
and requisitions. Finally the Hetman did betray Peter and went over to the
side of the invading Swedes, whom he thought would win. But while
Mazeppa was gone, Peter's forces slipped into the former's home city of
Baturin and completely destroyed it, slaughtering 7,000 inhabitants, soldiers
and civilians alike. Most of the Ukrainians then stood by the czar and the
worst winter of history, which followed, dealt a devastating blow to the
invading Swedes, with sentries freezing to death at their posts and overall,
some 3,000 Swedes freezing to death, with many more seriously
incapacitated by frost-bite. Still Karl XII would not give up, hoping to
receive reinforcements and supplies from Poland and the Turks and/or the
Crimean Tatars. None of this materialized although he did gain support
through the dealings of Mazeppa, of the wild Zaporozhsky Cossacks, who
lived on 13 fortified islands below the rapids of the vast Dnieper River,
under their Hetman Gordeenko. These Cossacks had sufficient boats to
transport 3,000 men across the great river in a single trip, but once again
Peter got there first and destroyed all the boats and razed their island base.

As noted in previous sections, the decisive battle of the Great Northern War
was fought in the summer of 1709 at Poltava in the Ukraine, in which an
original army of 19,000 Swedes left 6,900 dead and wounded and had 2,760
taken prisoner, including some 560 officers in both groups. Russian losses
were light. In that single battle, the Swedish invasion of Russia was
terminated and the political axis of Europe was shifted, with a new balance
of power, which carried over for the next three centuries. The last of the
Swedish army was caught and surrendered some days later as it attempted a
southern escape and Czar Peter then had 17,000 Scandinavian prisoners.
They were treated well, with the officers given the same rank in the Russian
army, where some served Russia on other fronts. Of the regular soldier
prisoners, in time some 1,000 became painters, goldsmiths, tailors,
shoemakers, woodsmen and teachers. When the final peace came in 1721,
only 5,000 Swedes could be found who wanted to return to Sweden. In the
meantime, King Karl XII escaped to Turkey.

St Petersburg continued to flourish, with Italian, French and German
architects all leaving their marks, but it never escaped entirely from the sea,
from which it was snatched, suffering complete flooding in 1715 and again

in 1775. The common people in and about St. Petersburg were chief ly
Finnish and while the women were chambermaids or cooks, the men were
sledge drivers or snow and ice shovelers and ice-breakers on the Neva. Ice
blocks supplied ice-houses on the ground floor of every large home. Even
the lowest servant spoke Russian, German and Finnish, while the educated
often spoke 8 or 9 languages. There were endless supply problems. While
fish could be obtained from lakes Ladoga and Onega, sheep and cattle had
to be brought from the Ukraine, the Don and the Volga regions or even from
Turkey. (Ref. 260)

Peter, like other sovereigns of his day, had his many eccentricities,
including the collection of giants and dwarf s. The Russian people of that
time were crude, with continual drinking and fighting being their greatest
entertainments, all under most unsanitary conditions. When they did bathe,
they then ran out into the snow, like many Finns do yet today. Under Peter,
Russia's past traditions disappeared; there were no more beards, caftans or
female seclusions at the court; the Julian calendar was adopted and the
alphabet simplified. Like Ivan the Terrible before him and Stalin afterwards,
Peter's individual will effectually transformed Russian society and
institutions within one quarter of a century. He transposed the serf system to
new industries, with everyone working directly or indirectly for the state.
(Ref. 139) Besides the westernization and naval development, men were
elevated by merit and although old noble titles were not abolished, they no
longer carried special privileges. He promoted mining and industry and an
Academy of Science. One of his greatest accomplishments was a
continuous waterway from the Caspian Sea via the Volga, Volga tributary, a
small canal at Vyshny-Volochok[footnote] to Lake Ladoga, the Neva River
and then the Baltic. But Lake Ladoga weather and waves were of ten too
much for flat-bottomed river barges, so later Peter started another canal at
the south end in the marches of Ladoga, which was to be 70' wide, 16' deep
and 66 miles long. It was not completed in Peter's life time.

This canal took 20,000 men four years to build. (Ref. 131)

Even after the Great Northern War was settled Peter's drive for conquest
was not stilled and he started for the Caspian Sea, Persia and India as well
as north and east to the Pacific. In 1724 the Danish born sea captain Vitus
Bering, in Russian employ, led an expedition to what was subsequently

called the Bering Strait, then 53 miles wide and only 144' deep. East of the
Caspian, Peter did not have much luck, as he was soon met by the army of
the Khan of Khiva. The Russians won the initial engagement and were
invited into the city where they were divided up for billeting and then were
systematically slaughtered, group by group. West of the Caspian in the area
of Christian Georgia, Peter had better fortune, eventually winning the city
of Derbent from then decadent Persia, along with three seaboard provinces
of the eastern Caucasus Persia continued to fight, however, and later in
1732 Empress Anna, losing 15,000 Russian soldiers a year to disease, gave
those Caucasian provinces back to Persia, where they remained until the
time of Czar Alexander I, in the next century. (Ref. 139, 53, 131)

On the bad side of Peter's ledger was the creation of a bureau of official
informers called "fiscals" and as today, when Russians sold goods to
foreigners, they could receive only foreign money. He also started an
internal passport system, still in use today, which binds a Russian to a f arm
or a factory. Of Peter's 12 children by Catherine, only Anna and Elizabeth
lived beyond the age of seven. Catherine was made officially Empress of all
Russia in 1722 and when Peter died in January, 1725 she continued to rule.
Peter's death had to do with a chronic urinary tract problem (he had passed
numerous stones) and apparently he developed an obstruction in his bladder
from stone or cancer of the prostate, along with infection. At autopsy he had
gangrene of the bladder and adjacent tissues. There was no evidence of
syphilis, as has been intimated by a few authors in the past. (Ref. 131) The
real ruler during Catherine I's short reign was Peter's old, close friend
Menshikov, also of very humble origins. Catherine died in 1727, succeeded
by Peter II (Peter's son by Eudoxia, his first wife) and Menshikov was
exiled. But Peter IT died of small-pox in 1730 and Anna, daughter of Ivan V,
and the widowed Duchess of Courland, became Empress for the next 10
years. On her death the infant Ivan VI, grandson of her elder sister,
Catherine of Mecklenburg, inherited the throne, only to be shortly
imprisoned for 22 years, while Elizabeth, Peter's daughter, helped by the
guards regiment became Empress from 1741 to 1762. Although never
married officially she may have secretly married her lover, Alexis
Razhumovsky, whom she raised from commoner to count. Following
Elizabeth came a short reign of Peter III (another of Peter the Great's
grandsons) and then his grandson's German wife, Catherine II the

Great[ footnote]. (Ref. 131) This Catherine had assumed power when she
schemed with her lover, the guard, the army and the navy to force her weak
husband to resign as czar. Shortly thereafter the poor husband was either
murdered or just died. (Ref. 135) Superficially she was a sophisticated ruler,
carrying on correspondence with Voltaire and other European intellectuals,
but at home she let social reforms die and was actually concerned only with
increasing her territories. She preserved her power by cultivating the
Imperial Guard and satisfying the noble class. The urban population rose to
about 2,000,000, while the serfs' lives became more degraded. In 1773
Emelian Pugachev, a Don Cossack, led an uprising of peasants, Cossacks of
southeastern Russia and minority groups of Kalmuks and Bushkirsalls
along the Ural and Volga rivers. The stage had been set by the long history
of serfdom and the attachment of peasants to factories, intolerance and
discrimination toward the various tribes in the Volga region, administration
corruption, abuse of power by the gentry, crushing tax burdens and
intolerable conditions in the army. Religion also became a factor when most
of the Cossacks, who were "old Believers", were forced to shave upon
conscription. At the time of that rebellion Russia was at war with Turkey
and busy with the partitions of Poland but when that was settled
government troops put down the rebellion (1775) and then executed
Pugachev. But the primary causes of the movement remained. (Ref. 135, 8)
Born Sophia-Augusta of Anhalt Zerbst. (Ref. 222)

We have mentioned Catherine's participation in the partitions of Poland in
section III, E, I, above. At the end of the century Catherine IT had finally
defeated the Tatar Khanate of the Crimea, getting control of the north shore
of the Black Sea. That portion of the steppe, which included the Ukraine
and the grasslands to the east, was far more valuable than the territories
which ended up under the control of Austria and Turkey. (Ref. 279) It was
Dutch money, loaned to Catherine 11 by Henry Hope and Company in the
amount of 57,000,000 francs that made that conquering expedition to the
Black Sea possible. (Ref. 292) Iron and copper ores, along with plenty of
charcoal, all from the Urals, allowed great expansion of armament
industries and general industrialization. (Ref. 8) In 1771 plague killed
56,672 people in Moscow alone, but an enlarged food supply through the
use of the plow overcame those losses so that the population actually
increased from about 12,500,000 in 1724 to 21,000,000 by 1796. Catherine

introduced smallpox inoculation through an English physician in 1768.
(Ref. 140)

A little more about the Russian science at this period is of interest. M.V.
Lomonosov was the father of Russian science, doing fine work in molecular
physics, chemistry, optics, electricity and in the development of a law of the
conservation of matter. He founded the Russian Academy of Science. It was
I.I. Shuvalov who founded the University of Moscow in 1755. Leonard
Euler, born in Switzerland, did most of his work at the Academy in St.
Petersburg. He was the greatest mathematician of the century, developing
calculus and some aspects of astronomy. He was the first to develop
algorithmic devices and use the concepts of "e", "Pi", and "i" for various
constants and an imaginary number, respectively. (Ref .135)

Forward to Europe: A.D. 1801 to 1900

Europe: A.D. 1801 to 1900

EUROPE
Back to Europe: A.D. 1701 to 1800

The population of Europe increased in this century from about 190 million
to over 400 million. Industrialization of continental Europe followed
England's examples and appeared early in the century basically in the
regions of available coal, as in northern France, Belgium and the Ruhr
Valley in Germany. Many of the industries and the necessary railway
transportation systems were built and operated by governments, because of
a lack of private capital. McNeill (Ref. 279) says that the industrialization
of war began in the 1840s when railroads and semi-automated mass
production together with Prussian breech-loaders and French naval steam
efforts began to transform the previous military establishments. Western
scientists (including Russians) tried to find the secret of damask steel (see
pages 342, 348 and 643) and in so doing really initiated the field of
metallography. (Ref. 260) The technology for using this metallurgy and
other rapidly developing new fields in armaments actually started in the
United States, by 1870. Russia, Spain, Sweden, Denmark and even Turkey
and Egypt, were all following the original English example of importing
American milling machinery for gun making. (Ref. 279)

The decline in oversea transportation costs made possible by the
development of the steamship allowed an era of migration from Europe to
the Americas, Oceania, Africa and Siberia. Railroads and steamships alike
also extended the area from which bulky crops such as grains and minerals
could be marketed and refrigeration allowed food and meat to be brought in
from America, China, Australia and India. After 1871, although Europe was
heavily armed, there were no wars for the remainder of the century. Ireland,
England and all northern Europe, including Russia, had been badly hurt in
mid-century, however, by the potato crop failure caused by the
establishment of a Peruvian parasitic fungus, which implanted itself in
European potatoes. The resulting famine in Irish, Belgian and German
populations, along with typhus fever and other diseases, produced millions
of deaths. (Ref. 8, 211)

SOUTHERN EUROPE

EASTERN MEDITERRANEAN ISLANDS

By 1829 the Cyclades had become part of Greece, rather than Turkey. The
Greek Cretans revolted against the Turks in the Greek-Turkish War at the
end of the century and Crete became independent. (Ref. 38) The authorities
then allowed Sir Arthur Evans to start excavations at Knossus. (Ref. 127)
The Italian Frederico Halbherr had done some excavation work on the south
shore of the island as early as 1884. Britain occupied Cyprus in 1877

GREECE

Led by Alexander Ypsilanti, the Greeks rose against the Muslim
overlordship of the Turks in 1821 and in the following year declared their
independence. The war was a savage one and also had elements of civil
conf lict within Greek groups, themselves.

Great Britain, Russia and France finally helped Greece by def eating the
Egyptian Muslim, Muhammad Ali, who had taken control of Greece, along
with Crete and part of Syria. The victory came in a great naval battle of
Navarino, in 1827 and an independent Greek kingdom was established in
1830 under Otto I, who had been a Bavarian prince. A constitution was
forced upon the unwilling king in 1844 and by 1862 he was forced to
abdicate in favor of Prince George of Denmark. After that Greece gradually
gained more territory, acquiring the Ionian islands and Thessaly.

Early in the century Adamantois Korais created a new Greek literary
medium, designed to emphasize connection with the classical tongue and to
purify the language from heavy infiltration of Italian and Turkish words.
(Ref. 139, 8)

UPPER BALKANS

From a material standpoint the Balkans lagged behind most of Europe.
Panes of glass were not commonly seen in Serbia until this century and
were still a rarity in Belgrade in 1808. (Ref. 260) In 1804 Serbian
highlanders, under the rich peasant Kara-george, rose against the local
Turks. The fierce fighting continued for several years and was finally put
down by Turkish armies. Karageorge fled to Austria, but in 1815 Milos
Obrenovic led a new revolt and that one succeeded so that Serbia
proclaimed autonomy in 1830. In 1859 the areas of Moldavia and Wallachia
became united as Romania, independent of Turkey. A native king was soon
disposed and a Hohenzollern became Carol I, recognized in Europe as the
sovereign of an independent Romania. Later in the century nationalist ideas
spread rapidly throughout the entire Balkan area, but linguistic groups were
so mixed up that a division on that basis became impossible. Languages
included Romanian, Bulgarian, Turkish, Macedonian, Greek, Albanian,
Serbian, Croatian, Slovenian and Hungarian with still some other minor
ones, so that many conflicting national claims were made. Russia tried to
intervene again in 1877, but the great powers again made her back down.
Both Serbia and Romania became truly independent in 1878, although
Romania had been united since 1859. Bosnia rebelled between 1875 and
1878, when Austria was permitted to proclaim a "protectorate" over it as
Bosnia-Hercegovina. The Bulgarians rose up against Turkish rule in 1876
and after initial defeat were finally helped to independence by Russia in the
Russo-Turkish War of 1877-78 and the subsequent Congress of Berlin. The
Bulgarian state, however, was reduced to but a shadow of its former self.
The remainder of Europe would not accept that situation immediately, so
formal independence was not acknowledged until 1908. We have mentioned
that Thessaly was added to Greece in 1881.

Greek merchant shippers constituted a limited area of transmission between
the Orthdox Balkan Society and western Europe. On the cultural level,
Karadjich and Obradovich used the peasant dialect of Herzegovina as the
basis for literary Serbian, replacing the old standard, which was based on
Church Slavonic. This allowed Serbian and Croatian languages to converge
and made modern Yugoslavia a possibility. (Ref. 68, 206, 8)

ITALY

Napoleon transformed Italy into a kingdom, with himself as king, putting
one of his family as viceroy of Italy and another as king of Naples. Pope
Pius VII was kidnapped and held captive until Napoleon's downfall in 1814.
Thereafter Italy became in part under Austria's control, part under the
Bourbon Ferdinand and part under the House of Savoy. Minor revolts,
which occurred in Naples and Piedmont in 1821 and in Parma, Modena and
Romagna in 1830-31, had no national aims, but later uprisings were more
forceful. In July, 1848 Charles Albert of Piedmont was decisively beaten by
Austrians at Custozza in Venetia. This led to a closer union of Austria and
Prussia, while Italy remained divided. Further war against Austria in 1858
and 1859, with French support, resulted in the union of Sicily, Naples,
Umbria, Romagna and Marches with Piedmont-Sardinia under Camillo
Benso di Cavour, prime minister of the Kingdom of Sardinia. He was one
of the great European statesmen of those times. Victor Emmanuel II was
king of Sardinia at the time and it was he, along with Cavour, who secured
France's aid in throwing off the yoke of Austria.

Garibaldi had taken over control of Sicily and Naples, with his thousand
volunteers, but these areas were annexed to Emmanuel's domain in 1860. In
1861 an Italian parliament met in Turin and declared Victor Emmanuel as
King of all Italy. When Austria was defeated by Prussia in 1866, Italy
acquired Venetia. Up until about that date Italians, like most Germans, were
more attached to their provincial rulers and cultures (Tuscan, Emilian, etc.)
than to a national idealism, although the middle class of people had
objected to Austrian rule. By the last 2/3 of the century, the Italians
extended the Piedmontese (Sardinian) constitution to the whole country and
made Italy a centralized entity on the French model. (Ref. 68, 139, 8)

An interesting sidelight is the beginning of the control of malaria in the
environs of Rome at the beginning of this century by Pope Pius VII. Ever
since the days of the late Roman Empire, when a shortage of manpower and
the frequent barbarian invasions led to neglect of the drainage systems of
the city and the surrounding areas, which had previously been irrigated,
malaria had been a serious, endemic disease of the region. From a
population of 750,000 in 70 B.C. Rome fell to 35,000 in A.D. 1050 and
malaria has been indicted by some as the chief cause. But the draining of
the marshes was started again by Pius VII and completed in the next

century by Mussolini, when the population of Rome reached a million.
(Ref. 213)

CENTRAL EUROPE

Northern Europe had one of the worst summers of all recorded time in
1816. There was frost in July and practically no harvest, so that famine
resulted. (Ref. 213)

GERMANY

Between 1801 and 1803 Napoleon and his minister, Talleyrand, supervised
the reorganization of the old Holy Roman Empire and this was done, not on
German soil, but in Paris. The initial steps involved over 1/2 of the more
than 300 political entities that had claimed sovereign status since the Treaty
of Westphalia. Some 64 ecclesiastical principalities were secularized and 45
of the 51 free-cities were absorbed into larger units. Then the German
princes confiscated all religious establishments and the lands of most of the
"Knights". By October of 1806 Napoleon had delivered Prussia a telling
blow at Jena and the French armies entered Berlin. In the same year
Napoleon established the Confederation of the Rhine, with himself as its
official protector. All states of the old empire joined this except Austria,
Prussia, Brunswick and electoral Hesse. This definitely ended the Holy
Roman Empire, forcing the abdication of the title of emperor by Francis II
of Austria and then Germany began to draw itself together. At the same
time Napoleon was rewarding Wuerttemburg, Saxony and Bavaria for their
loyalties by elevating their dukes to kings and giving each a little more
territory. Saxony got the Duchy of Warsaw from Prussia; Maximilian
became king of Bavaria. But by 1813 Metternick got his Austria to declare
war again on France and maneuvered to get Bavaria to desert Napoleon. In
a 4 day battle near Leipzig, Napoleon was totally defeated and in the later
Peace of Paris and the European Congress at Vienna, which lasted 10
months, Europe was divided among the 4 great powers of Prussia, Austria,
Russia and England.

Prussia was re-made into a modern state by a group of enlightened
legislators, chiefly Freiherr vom Stein, from a family of Rhineland Knights.
The great General Staff was created between 1803 and 1809, utilizing
intellectual, vigorous officers. (Ref. 279)

The serfs were freed, commerce and industry released from many
restrictions and the army made more efficient and humane. On the total
scene, however, Frederick William III of Prussia played a subsidiary role to
both Metternich of Austria and Alexander of Russia. A German
Confederation was formed of 35 sovereign principalities and 4 free-cities.

Map taken from Reference 97.

Frederick William hated that Confederation but Metternich utilized it to his
advantage.

In the 1820s while many parts of Europe reverberated with liberal
revolutions, Germany and Austria remained tranquil, although after 1830
some of the more liberal states of south and west Germany experienced
mild disturbances. In Prussia, the widespread introduction of steam power
in 1812 and an extensive net of railways produced an economic boom and
eventually helped in the unification of Germany. Prussia further gained by a
high tariff on goods transported across her territory and since she sat astride
the most important trade routes between northern and southern Europe, this
was a considerable boon. The Zollverein (Customs Union) derived out of
that tariff was joined by 7 small neighboring states in 1828 and Prussian
imperialism was already underway to some degree. By 1842 almost all
German states except Austria, Hanover and a few free-cities had joined the
Zollverein. This, along with railroads and the electric telegraph, bound the
states together, acting as a unifier. By 1848 there were 3,000 miles of track
in Germany. In spite of that, in some areas there were economic failures,
unemployment and occasional uprisings.

The plague epidemic of 1846 was another problem and that was followed
by world wide trade and financial crises, crop failures and inflation. In 1848
revolutions spread across Europe again, most of them essentially
interrelated. In Germany there were three main aims: The unification of the
country; the demand for basic civil rights and a measure of popular

sovereignty; and freedom for serfs with better hours, wages and benefits for
city workers. In the lesser states such as Wuerttembury and Hesse, there did
result more liberal cabinets. In Baden there was much blood shed in many
massacres.

In Bavaria things were different as King Maximilian I allowed a liberal
constitution and promoted arts, science and architecture. When his
successor Ludwig I gave his low-born Irish mistress, Lola Montez, a title,
he was forced to abdicate and Maximilian IIT became king with a moderately
liberal ministry. Both Ludwig II and son Otto I were brilliant but insane.
The former was a friend of the composer, Wagner. In the meantime, Munich
University had been transformed into an artistic and scholarly center.

By this time in Prussia there was revolution. The first disorders arose in the
Rhineland, Silesia and East Prussia. Eventually crowds took over Berlin
and the king placed himself at the mercy of his people and a meeting of the
United Diet was called. Soon, however, royal power was re-assumed, the
new liberal cabinet was dismissed and a new government formed under the
conservative Count of Brandenburg.

In spite of all, many groups still worked for the unification of Germany.
Some 600 delegates from various states met at Frankfurt in 1848, but the
delegates got bogged down in too many problems of nationality, cross-
purposes, etc. and this, as well as the revolutions, failed at that time.
Because of the failure of the 1848 revolutions, Karl Marx was stimulated to
write the Communist Manifesto, with the help of Engles. Actually the final
unification of Germany involved three wars. The first was Prussia against
Denmark. In 1861 King Wilhelm I came to the throne of Prussia and chose
Count Otto von Bismarck-Schonhousen as his chief minister. In 1862
Bismarck dismissed the Prussian parliament, allied with Austria and
attacked Denmark, taking Schleswig-Holstein in 1864. The "Seven Weeks
War" followed in 2 years, with three theaters: (1) Italy, in which the Italians
were defeated on both land and sea; (2) Germany, involving defeat of the
Hanoverians; and (3) Bohemia, where the Austrians came to the
Bohemians' aid. (Ref. 119) In that war Helmut von Moltke showed how the
aristocratic General Staff planners could speed up and control deployment
of vast numbers of men by carefully calculating everything ahead of time.

In addition, the use of breech-loading rifles for the first time (after 26 years
of transition) and the probable use of Alfred Krupp's breech-loading steel
artillery must have played large roles. The Austrians, however, had 736 new
rifled cannon and 58 smooth-bores to the Prussians’ 492 rifled and 306
smooth-bores. The Austrians lost the Battle of Koenig-graetz because they
had their infantry charge the foe in dense columnar formations. (Ref. 279)
At the end of that conflict Prussia annexed Hanover and other German
States, abolishing the Bund and forming a new North German
Confederation. Bohemia, Austria, Bavaria, Wuerttemburg, Hohenzollern
Baden, Palatinate and Alsace-Lorraine were not included in that
confederation. Bismarck and Moltke shared the glory of that political
reorganization of Germany with King Wilhelm. (Ref. 279)

The third war was the Franco-German War of 1870-71 which was easily
won by Bismarck[footnote] and resulted in the withdrawal of French forces
from Italy and the acquisition of Alsace-Lorraine. Prussian planning
defeated French elan as the French speed of supply and deployment fell far
behind. A new German Empire grew out of that victory, along with a newly
awakened German nationalism. All of the principalities mentioned above,
except Bohemia and Austria, now joined this new empire, which was
headed by the king of Prussia, who took the title of Deutscher Kaiser
(Caesar). Perhaps unfortunately for the future of Germany, this empire
contained a number of non-Germans, some Danes, many Poles and, of
course, many Frenchmen in Alsace and Lorraine.

The French stopped compulsory military small-pox vaccination after the
Napoleonic Wars, but the Prussians continued. Thus, small-pox put 20,000
French soldiers out of action in the Franco-Prussian War, while the
Germans went unscathed. (Ref. 140)

Otto von Bismarck-Schonhousen was a remarkable man, fluent in both
English and French as well as German. As chancellor he placated England
and Russia, obtained colonies in Africa and the Pacific and made many
social reforms within Germany, itself. He promoted a good deal of social
legislation which included: a health insurance law which gave financial and
medical aid to workers off work with illness; an accident insurance law for
workers' disability compensation; and an old age and invalidism insurance
for all those disabled and/or over 70 years of age. The reader will have no

trouble recognizing most of these features in present day American life. In
1890 Wilhelm II, known to the generation of the writer as simply "the
Kaiser", dismissed Bismarck and turned to building up the army and navy,
developing military industry and making enemies on all sides. He was not
prepared for the task which he had inherited in 1888. Always immature,
psychologically warped, perhaps in part because of his crippled left arm,
sadly susceptible to flattery, he believed in "divine right" monarchy and at
the same time loved all things modern - industry and engineering in
particular. After he had deposed Bismarck he made Count Georg Leo von
Caprivi his chancellor for 4 years, then followed with the once able but then
aged Prince Chlodwig zu Hohenlohe-Schillingf uerst of Bavaria. In this
man's senility, Wilhelm could, in truth, "railroad" through most of his own
ideas, all of which resulted in extensive world involvement.

Map taken from Reference 97

By the last half of the century all of Germany west of the Elbe, but
especially the area along the Rhine, had mechanized industry and
eventually outstripped France and England. It had the raw materials and
developed a great scientific, educational system and research facilities.
After 1871 Germany set the pace for industrial supremacy with a lead in
chemicals and electricity, with the latter industry dominated by Werner
Siemens and Emil Rathenau. The German phase of the Industrial
Revolution embraced a wider variety of materials (electrical, chemical,
petroleum and light metals), but coal and iron remained primary. Coal was
used for tars and derivatives as diverse as aspirin, dyes and explosives. Iron
underwent potable chemical diversification after the invention of the
Bessemer converter in 1856. Railroads were necessary to unlock mineral
wealth previously cut off from exploration. The German contributions to
industrial development included deliberate, planned invention, extensive
credit through banks and cartels and human engineering, with the
cultivation of an elite in both the military and industry. Even with the
Industrial Revolution, Germany maintained an adequate food supply by
putting an additional 2,000,000 acres under cultivation.

In the last decade of the 19th century the population of Germany increased
15% to 56,400,000. Forty percent of the people engaged in industry, twelve

percent in trade and communication. Friedrich Siemens, with others,
developed the open hearth method of making steel directly from ore. In one
generation, 1840-1875, these north-central Europeans went from the Middle
Ages to Modern Times. (Ref. 213) But there was inadequate urban housing,
crowding, exorbitant rents and low wages. Germany's troubles and policies
eventually resulting in World War I were not entirely the fault of Kaiser
Wilhelm, but of Bismarckian government without a Bismarck. One of the
important changes under the Kaiser was the rapid expansion of the German
navy. New ships were launched and the Kiel Canal dug from the North Sea
to the Baltic, bypassing any possible Danish blockade. In 1897 Admiral
Tirpitz was put in charge and the naval program accelerated until well into
the next century.

But Germany of this century was not all politics, industry, army and navy.
F.W.A. Sertuerner isolated morphine as a pure alkaloid in 1806; Robert
Koch established the bacterial cause of anthrax and tuberculosis; Rudolf
Virchow (1821-1902) was called the "Pope" of medicine in Europe. He
wrote on leukemia, thrombosis, embolism and phlebitis as well as delving
into multiple scientific and social fields. At the end of the century German
speaking countries (and we must include Austria in this) had the leadership
in medicine. In the period of 1815 to 1840 alone, there were great men in
literature, music, education, scholarship, philosophy and science, as well.
The University of Berlin was founded in 1811. Some of the more famous
names of the era include Beethoven, Schubert, Mendelssohn, Schumann,

AUSTRIA (Part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire)

Austria was invaded by Napoleon while Great Britain, Russia, Austria and
Sweden were forming an alliance, along with Prussia, to contain him. This
alliance was the so-called "Third Coalition". The Austrians suffered a
defeat at Ulm; Napoleon entered Vienna and then annihilated the Austrians
and Russians together in the Battle of Austerlitz in Moravia in late 1805. In
the Peace of Pressburg on December 26, 1805 Austria ceded all claims to
her Italian and south German territories and dropped from her status as a
world power|footnote]. Emperor Franz (Francis) had to give up his title of

Holy Roman Emperor and thereafter the Habsburgs were emperors of
Austria and Hungary only. Napoleon reentered Vienna, took up residence in
Schoenbrunn Palace and continued to dismember Austria. It was in this
desperate situation that Klemens Lothar Metternich, Austrian ambassador to
Paris, returned to be imperial chancellor. To understand this complex,
capable man, who has strong admirers and vicious detractors among the
historians, will require some additional details.

This comment was taken from the German historian, Reinhart (Ref. 177,
but according to the Austrian historian, Rickett (Ref. 181), the true glory of
Austria was yet to unfold, as we shall see

Basically Metternich was probably the greatest diplomat of his time, the
French Talleyrand not withstanding. He arranged a marriage of Princess
Marie Louise to Napoleon, contributed a small Austrian contingent to
Napoleon's disastrous Moscow expedition of 1812, thus gaining an
armistice from the French emperor allowing some breathing room to reform
his armies. He then offered to mediate peace proposals with France, Prussia
and Russia. Bonaparte refused the terms, was defeated by Prussia and
Russia at the Battle of Leipzig (1813) and abdicated. It was Metternich's
diplomatic victory and the Treaty of Paris, which followed, called for no
territorial concession or reparations, but merely arranged for the European
Congress in Vienna to be held two months later. That Congress of Vienna of
1815, which included the "big four" of Russia, England, Prussia[footnote],
and Austria, promptly elected Metternich as president. Amid much pomp,
entertainment and back-stage diplomacy, Metternich arranged for Austria to
regain much of her old territory in return for giving up Belgium, part of the
Netherlands and a few small holdings on the Rhine. Austria gained
4,500,000 people and the undisputed hegemony in Italy. After that
Congress, Austria enjoyed her last great time as a prestigious power in
Europe, with a period of thirty years of unbroken peace.

The Prussians, who are genetically about half Slavic, registered as a Slav
Monarchy. (Ref. 213)

An interesting sidelight to the machinations of Metternich and his Austrian
emperor has to do with the treatment of the only son of Napoleon. Born in
March, 1811 to Marie Louis, daughter of Emperor Franz, Napoleon had his
son christened "Napoleon Francis Joseph Charles Bonaparte, King of

Rome". After his father 's banishment to Elba, the boy was tentatively to be
given the title of Prince of Parma, with his mother as regent, but in the end
Metternich and the emperor took him to Vienna for "protection" while his
mother was given a small principality in Italy to rule. In Vienna, as a bright,
handsome child, Napoleon II was raised virtually as a political prisoner
until his death from tuberculosis at the age of 21 years. To the end he
intermittently hoped for a throne and was actually considered at one time or
another for the crowns of Greece, Poland and Belgium, as well as France.
His mother took a lover by whom she had several illegitimate children and
turned against her banished husband and essentially abandoned her French
son. (Ref. 23)

Concerning Metternich, the other side of the coin shows that his domestic
"system" led to revolution and his eventual downfall. To prevent the rise of
nationalism in his multi- racial domain, he developed almost a police state,
denying all freedoms. There was no free parliament, no free press, no free
university, no intelligent civil service. All liberalism was suppressed. The
revolution was led by the intellectuals in 1848, and the aims there were
different than those in Germany, for in Austria the revolution was designed
at securing autonomy for the component nationalities living under the
Habsburg rule. In the turmoil, Metternich was forced to resign and he
escaped to London, while Vienna was turned over to the National Guard.
The Hungarians adopted their own constitution and other coalitions rose to
demand self-rule. The Milanese forced the withdrawal of Austrian troops
and the Venetians set up an independent republic again. The Czechs,
Moravians and Galicians were all clamoring for autonomy. In the meantime
(while Metternich was still there), the old emperor had died (1835) and the
inadequate Ferdinand, hydrocephalic, epileptic and close to an idiot,
reigned in name only. Prince Felix von Schwarzenberg assumed the post of
chief minister and persuaded the weak Ferdinand to abdicate in favor of his
18 year old grandson Franz-Joseph I and between them, the Habsburg
Empire was restored.

In a few years the new emperor took as his bride the beautiful Elizabeth, a
Wittelsbach of Bavaria and then proceeded to complete his reign of "sixty-
eight years of almost unbroken misfortune and disaster but he never
swerved or flinched from his mission"[footnote]. By remaining neutral in

the Crimean War he antagonized Russia and exposed Austria's weaknesses
to the whole of Europe. His empire contained 50,000,000 subjects and after
his able prime minister's death (Schwarzenberg), he attempted to rule alone
as an autocrat. In the field as commander he soon lost Lombardy and other
lesser territories and found that his Slav and Magyar troops were not very
loyal. Elizabeth left him for all practical purposes, perhaps due in part to her
mental health and in part because of very serious mother-in-law problems.
Then Bismarck appeared on the scene from the north in Bohemia, with
three separate armies. As Bohemia's ally, Austria sent Field Marshal
Benedek north to attack. In the battle of Koeniggraetz (Sadowa) he
eventually met def eat. (See page 1073). In the final peace of that 7 weeks
war, Austria was excluded from the German League and Venetia was given
up once again to Emmanuel's Italy (1864). Then there was peace for 40
years, until 1914.

Quotation from Rickett (Ref. 181), page 93

Franz-Joseph had picked poor prime ministers after Schwarzenberg. There
was no Bismarck, no Disraeli, no Gladstone nor Clemenceau. The one who
came nearest to his liking and trust was Count Edward Taaf e, who lasted
14 years in the job and kept some peace by diplomacy only between the
Poles, Czechs, Hungarians, Slovenes and the Austrians. But by 1886 there
was great political strife between German and Bohemian subjects and
Franz-Joseph did not well understand their feelings, but felt the only
solution was continual adherence of both to Vienna. Georg von Schoenerer
was an early leader of the Pan-Germanic movement, which was also anti-
semitic. A program of state ownership of railroads, graduated income tax
and the separation of church and school were proposals offered by Linz.
Another "radical" was Viktor Adler, who founded the Social Democratic
Party and organized demonstrations.

Austria's contributions to world knowledge and culture during this century
were fantastic. In medicine alone the accomplishments were legion. Carl
Rokitansky was the founder of pathological anatomy; Hermann Nothnagle
first evaluated blood pressure in diagnosis; and Ernest Bruecke pioneered in
physiology. There were multiple world famous psychiatrists - Freud, Krafft-
Ebing, Joseph Brewer and others. Among the orthopedic surgeons were
Adolf Lorenz and Lorenz Boehler, Jr. Bela Schick devised the diphtheria

skin test, while Johannes Mueller is credited with establishing medicine as a
true science. Von Helmholtz developed the ophthalmoscope; Koch worked
out the bacteriology of tuberculosis and cholera; and Semmelweiss found
the cause of puerperal fever, making one of the great advances in obstetrical
care. Probably the greatest surgeon of the late century was Albert Theodor
Billroth, born and educated in Germany, but working later in Zurich and
especially Vienna, where he was the first to perform extensive operations
on the pharynx, larynx and stomach. His students subsequently filled most
of the prestigious surgical appointments in Europe. Incidentally, Billroth
was also a musician and a great friend of Brahms.

Technological advances in Austria may be listed as follows:

e 1815 - Founding of Vienna Polytechnic

e 1829 - First trial of screw driven vessel, in Trieste Harbor

¢ 1839 - Invention of the sewing machine by Madersperger of Vienna,
and also the time of Austria's first railway

e 1864 - First internal combustion engine invented by Siegried Marcus

e 1866 - Typewriter invented by Mitterhofer of the Tyrol

The great musicians of Austria included Johann Strauss, Joseph Haydn,
Ludwig van Beethoven, Johann Brahms (originally from Hamburg, but
settled in Vienna), Richard Wagner (from Bavaria) and Franz Schubert. In
1873 building was started on Vienna University, but in that same year a
cholera epidemic broke out and a "Black Friday" occurred on the stock
exchange, with a resulting financial crisis, which spread across Europe and
even to the United States. By 1890 Vienna had 1,300,000 people.

The Empress Elizabeth was killed by an assassin in Geneva in 1898 and the
heir to the throne, her son Rudolph, had committed suicide some 9 years
previously. At the end of the century there were mass meetings of the Social
Democrats in Vienna and the cry was "Young Czechs" against Germans.
(Ref. 177, 184, 128, 125) Braudel (Ref. 292) quotes the historian of rural
Austrian society, Otto Bruenner, as saying that the peasantry of Austria was
the real foundation stone of European society and that regardless of changes
in government, it had remained essentially -unchanged in structure from
Neolithic times right down to the 19th century.

HUNGARY (Part of Austro-Hungarian Empire, and the previous paragraphs must also be
read to get a complete picture of Hungary at this period)

After 1790 the chief demand of the Hungarian Diet, whenever the Austrian
emperor allowed it to meet, was for wider use of the Magyar language in
administration, courts and education. Lexicographers re-fashioned and
enriched the native tongue and the cult of language was accompanied by
similar dedication to national costumes, dances and the like. The Croats in
the empire fought the switch to the Magyar language and began to develop
their own tongue, along with a sense of Pan-Slavism. Count Istvan
Szechenyi was a great Hungarian nationalist whose books Kitel and Vilag
started the "Reform Era" in Hungary in 1830. He desired Magyarism and
reform, but under the blessings of the emperor. His contemporary and
eventual opponent, Lajos Kossuth, wanted progress and complete liberty
from Austria. In 1840 the government passed a law making Magyar the
official language of all institutions of Great Hungary. The Croats were
given 6 years to conform. The reaction of the non-Magyars, including the
immigrant Saxons and Slavs and the Romanians in Transylvania, was
strong. Revolution broke out in Austria in 1848, along with that in much of
Europe, and Kossuth took advantage to reform Hungary as a limited
monarchy subject to the Austrian monarch, but in many internal respects,
almost free. But the Serbs and Croats rebelled against Hungary under their
leader, Jellacic.

At first he had Austrian help, but as further revolt occurred in Austria itself,
this help soon dwindled and in the end Hungary triumphed, even
temporarily breaking away from Austria. Franz-Joseph called on Russia for
help and two Russian armies entered Hungary, forcing Kossuth to surrender
and he personally fled to Turkey. By 1867 Hungary had re- covered her
integrity under Deak, by the Ausgleich (compromise) of 1867, under which
Hungarians won equal status with the German speaking population. The
situation had in part been promoted by the Empress Elizabeth, who had a
real and compassionate interest in Hungary. Thus began the "Age of
Dualism" and one might then truly speak of "Austria-Hungary".
Magyarization of all the people then followed, with changes of individual
names and places to conform with the Magyar language.

By 1900 Hungary had over a million workers in mining and industry. There
were two universities in Hungary proper, one in Croatia. There were a large
number of colleges of law, theology, mining, etc. This was the time of the
physicist Lorand Eotvds and the physician Semmelweiss, who was actually
Hungarian, although part of his work was done in Vienna. Budapest was
79.8% Magyar speaking, but other ethnic frontiers remained on the east,
north and west. Jews made up 4.9% of the overall population, 25% in
Budapest and they had almost a monopoly in banking and finance. (Ref.
126, 8)

CZECHOSLOVAKIA

This area continued restlessly under the rule of the Austria-Hungarian
Empire. Moravia was an important battle ground for Napoleon's rout of the
Russian and Austrian forces, in the first decade of the century. After 1840 to
1850 the rapid growth of cities in the Habsburg domains, together with the
ravages of cholera resulted in peasant migration into the towns of Bohemia
and Hungary to such an extent that the previous pattern of those people
learning to speak German and being "Germanized" was changed and a
nationalistic ideal appeared. The result was that Prague became a Czech-
speaking city within one-half century, just as Budapest had become a
Magyar-speaking capital.

In the last of the century there was growing business prosperity, with
particular emphasis on textiles, shoes, cheap china and glass, sugar
refineries, breweries, coal and graphite mines and the great Skoda machine
shop at Pilsen. Prague University had new vigor with Professor Thomas
Masaryk becoming one of the greatest of Czech philosophers and patriots.
He later became a member of the Austrian Parliament, promoting the
Bohemian cause and in the next century was to become the first president of
the Czechoslovakian Republic. In Moravia, there were riots in 1899 with
the looting of Jewish and German houses so that troops had to be called out
to restore order.

SWITZERLAND

We noted in the last chapter that Napoleon had conquered Switzerland. In
1803 he allowed a satisfactory federal constitution and with Bonaparte's
fall, the Confederation was restored. In 1815 the Congress of Vienna
guaranteed the perpetual neutrality of that land and this had never been
violated to date. After a short civil war in 1847 a new close national union
developed and a new federal constitution was written. All tariff barriers
between the cantons were removed between 1848 and 1874. The
International Red Cross was formed at the Geneva Convention of 1864,
chiefly due to the efforts of Jean Henri Dunant, a Swiss banker, who had
happened to see a battlefield in northern Italy littered with tens of thousands
of wounded soldiers lying unattended on the ground. The Red Cross
insignia is the Swiss flag, with colors reversed. (Ref. 8, 125)

WESTERN EUROPE

SPAIN

The Napoleonic Wars brought Spain to the edge of ruin. After war with
France and then against England, as a French ally, Spain's sea power was
destroyed and Napoleon put his brother Joseph on the Spanish throne in
1805. In 1812 Joseph, with his Cortes (Congress), abolished the Inquisition
and limited the powers of the Catholic Church. Fighting continued,
however, in the Peninsular War, with Great Britain entered on the side of
the Spanish people and eventually driving out the French. The locals had
never accepted Joseph and Napoleon's dominion was already collapsing,
anyway, so after the Peninsular War, King Ferdinand VII resumed rule and
revoked the new laws regarding the church. Spanish overseas colonies were
revolting, however, and the people of Spain blamed the king, so he was
taken prisoner and anarchy followed, with various temporary rulers,
including Isabella I, who reigned from 1833 to 1868, at first with regents.
The contesting of her succession by her uncle, Don Carlos led to the Carlist
Wars. In these revolts most of the Basque provinces and much of Catalonia
supported Carlos. Civil wars and insurrections followed one after another
until 1876, over a year after Isabella's son Alfonso XII had been proclaimed

king. The economy remained critical and Spain had industry in only a few
small areas. Even in 1829 the trade was only 1/3 of what it had been in
1785. The last great European famine was in Andalusia in 1882. On the
death of Alfonso XII, his posthumous son Alfonso XIII reigned during the
remainder of the century with his mother as regent. (Ref. 213, 38)

The Spanish-American War developed in 1898, secondary to the long-
standing insurrection in Cuba, with the American press sympathetic to the
rebels. When a United States ship, the U.S.S. Maine, was mysteriously
blown up in Havana Harbor, war was formally declared. When that war
ended and the treaty signed in Paris, the last of Spanish America was lost.
(Ref. 68, 8, 55) (Some additional information about Spain is to be found in
the next section on PORTUGAL)

PORTUGAL

As the century opened Portugal was ruled by Pedro III, under the regency
of his mother, Maria I. Trouble with the French led to a humiliating treaty in
1801 by which Portugal had to renounce treaties with England and pay
heavy indemnities. Then when Spain temporarily allied with France, it was
Manuel de Godoy, Spanish chief minister and lover of the Spanish Queen
Maria Luisa, who invited Napoleon's aid in the dismemberment of Portugal.
A French army under General Andoche Junot crossed into Spain and then a
combined French and Spanish force took off for Portugal. The Portuguese
royal family, including the Prince Regent Dom Joao, with 15,000 courtiers,
took off for Brazil under protection of the British fleet. As Junot entered
Lisbon he immediately imposed an indemnity of 100 million francs. (1807).
In the meantime, however, the new Spanish King Joseph, put on the throne
by Napoleon, had met with stiff local opposition and in 1808 two French
divisions, mistakenly believing they were surrounded by greatly superior
forces, had surrendered and 22,800 of them were interned on the island of
Cabrera, where hundreds of them died of starvation or disease. The English
government, now realizing that Junot's forces in Lisbon could not be
reinforced from Spain, sent Sir Arthur Wellesley (the future Duke of
Wellington) to Portugal with a fleet and army. He was soon joined by bands
of Portuguese infantry and on August 21, 1808 he completely defeated

Junot's army as it came out of Lisbon. This was the Peninsular War, which
we have mentioned previously. The British forces were supplied by sea,
using techniques developed during the American Revolution. In a crucial
battle just outside Lisbon in 1810-11 the well-fed British troops pushed
back some 250,000 starved French soldiers. All of this allowed Portugal to
again be in alliance with England and by 1814 Wellington had even helped
the Spanish push the French out of Spain, also.

But Portugal's troubles were not over. A liberal revolution against the
regency broke out in 1820 and Joao VI returned from Brazil. His forces
stopped the insurrection but he accepted a liberal constitution in 1822 in the
same year that Brazil declared its independence under Pedro I, who was
Joao's elder son. In spite of these things, Portugal made progress, with
sanitary reforms, the building of railroads, telephone lines and schools and
the abolition of slavery in her colonies. In the last half of the century under
Pedro V and Louis I of the House of Coburg-Braganza, there was respite
from civil strife, but there were political and financial troubles resulting
from long civil wars which had raged during the middle years of this
period. There were two opposing factions of professional politicians, the
Regenerators and the Progressives and they developed a system of rotating
power, with a resulting sterile, pseudo-parliamentary system. At Louis'
death in 1889 sporadic revolts, strikes and conspiracies returned. Louis' son
Carlos I (Charles) even tried in 1900 to support a dictatorship under Joao
Franco, head of the Regenerator party, but this caused a violent reaction,
and in 1908 Carlos and the heir apparent were shot in a public square in
Lisbon. (Ref. 55, 68, 119, 38)

FRANCE

In the last chapter we noted that at the end of the 18th century Napoleon
returned to France as consul after his escape from the British in his
Egyptian fiasco.

We should add that on November 12, 1799 the Provisional Consuls -
Napoleon, Sieyes and Roger Ducos - met in Luxembourg Palace to make
plans to rebuild France, a nation in economic, political, religious and moral

disarray. Some effects of the French Revolution had been positive, such as
peasant proprietorship, capitalism, replacement of feudalism by a free
peasantry, encouragement of science, a world view of theology and a
national system of schools. But true democracy was given only a nod as all
officials from local to national levels were made by appointment by the
central government. In effect the central government was soon just
Napoleon.

We must pause to give at least a thumb-nail sketch of this man, Napoleon
Bonaparte, who has had some 200,000 books and pamphlets written about
him and who has been labeled by some as a hero struggling to give unity
and law to Europe and by others as an ogre, who drained the blood of
France and ravaged Europe. He was born on Corsica in 1.769, only a few
months after France had purchased that mountainous island f rom Genoa
and Napoleon always remained basically an Italian Corsican of noble
Tuscany pedigree. His brother Joseph was initially made King of Naples,
then of Spain; his brother Louis married a de Beauharnais and became King
of Holland; sister Maria Anna Elisa was the Grand Duchess of Tuscany;
Pauline married Prince Camillo Borghese; Maria Caroline married Joachim
Mural and became Queen of Naples; while brother Jerome rose to be King
of Westphalia.

In his youth Napoleon did well in mathematics, geography, history, and
Plutarch. He was selected from his French military school- to receive
advanced instruction at the Ecole Militaire and then went on to rapid
advancement in the French army. His first wife, Josephine de Beauharnais,
widow of a vicomte murdered in the revolution, was older than Napoleon
by 6 years and was the mother of 2 before her marriage to Bonaparte.
Although devoted to her and yet at times tormented by her occasional-
infidelities, Napoleon finally divorced Josephine because she remained
childless by him. He then married the Austrian Archduchess, Maria Louise,
who did present him with an heir, only about 3 years before his final
military defeats[ footnote].

At the time of his birth this baby, Napoleon II, was declared King of Rome,
but he never ruled anyplace

To summarize in advance the information to follow, Bonaparte ruled France
for 15 years as First Consul of the First Republic (1799-1804) and as
emperor from 1804 to 1814 and during that time conquered almost the
whole of Europe, finally being defeated by a coalition of Austria, Prussia
and Russia at the Battle of Leipzig in Germany in October 1813 and
subsequently again by the British at Waterloo, Belgium in 1814. Louis
XVIII was then called to be king. Napoleon himself estimated that his
campaigns resulted in the deaths of 1,700,000 Frenchmen, more than were
killed in both subsequent World Wars. It is interesting, however, that more
soldiers died of typhus f ever in the Napoleonic Wars than in battle. Small-
pox was not a problem in his own armies as he had had all his troops
vaccinated in 1805, introducing this to Europe. He also pioneered the large
scale use of canned food for his troops. The road to defeat was a long one.
Napoleon abandoned the idea of siege warfare early and aimed at defeating
an enemy by out-maneuvering him.

Crushing defeats were given to Austria at Austerlitz (1805), to Prussia at
Jena (1806) and to Russia at Friedland (1807). In 1808 in a rapid invasion
of Spain a British expedition force was forced back to the sea[ footnote].
Switzerland came under French protection, Spain, northeast Italy, Naples
and Westphalia became satellite kingdoms under the Bonaparte family.
Only reduced kingdoms of Austria and Prussia preserved some semblance
of independence. Napoleon's great international frustration was England
and his attempt to avenge that enemy was probably the cause of his
downfall. Sitting in conquered Berlin in late 1806, as the son of Maria
Louise and the grandson of Emperor Franz, he was held virtually as a
prisoner of Austria from childhood until his death. More details are given
on page 1077. The last thoughts of Napoleon I on his death bed were of this
boy. (Ref. 23)

See page 1083 for the British resurgence

He decreed that all ports and coasts of the European continent were closed
to the entry of British goods. The blockade worked at first and by 1810
England was in a severe economic depression while France prospered with
an accelerated Industrial Revolution. Then suddenly the situation reversed.
The French textile industry was unable to get raw material and capital, a
banking firm in Lubeck failed and in 1811 France had a great depression,

with bank failures, factory closings, strikes, poverty, riots and areas of
starvation. The blockade had been particularly damaging to Russia also and
after Czar Alexander had made peace with Turkey, he signed a mutual aid
pact with Sweden and offered an alliance with England, while he opened
his ports to ships of all nations. Then he declared war on France.

The mobilizations of both the Russians and French were massive. Napoleon
had some difficulty conscripting the now somewhat satiated French, but
annexations to France almost doubled the number of "Frenchmen" to about
44,000,000 by 1810 so that eventually he had an army of 680,000 fighting
men, less than 1/2 of which were actually French. Only a minority even
spoke French. (Ref. 279) Relentlessly he churned on to Vilna, Smolensk
and Moscow, with the Russian armies retreating in an orderly f ashion
ahead of him and burning and destroying all possible provisions. As he
arrived in Moscow he found the city almost deserted and then mysteriously
2/3 of the city was burned, whether by the French, Russian soldiers or by
order of Count Rostopchin, governor of Moscow, no one knows for certain.
Finding no one to fight and with winter approaching, Napoleon decided to
return to central Europe. Winter caught him and Russian troops harassed
him from the flanks and the rear. The loss of men was unbelievable and
only 30,000 men re-crossed the Nieman River into East Prussia in
December, 1812. Dominique-Jean Larrey, Napoleon's chief surgeon is said
to have performed over 200 amputations during one 24 hour period during
that Russian campaign. (Ref. 125)

Czar Alexander had followed the retreating French armies as they
approached East Prussia and he urged the king and people of Prussia to join
him against Napoleon. In the meantime the latter was trying to recoup his
financial losses, conscript still another army, defend his Italian possessions
against Austria and console the French people for his defeat in Russia. He
arranged a temporary truce through the help of Metternich, but all nations
simply used that time for more war preparation. Napoleon received a
contingent of men from Denmark and returned to the battles, but Bernadotte
of Sweden brought an army to join the allles of Prussia, Russia, Bohemia
and Austria and finally after Napoleon's Saxor and Bavarian troops deserted
him, he was soundly defeated at Leipzig in 3 days of terrible carnage in
October of 1813.

The Netherlands then overthrew French rule (with Prussian help), parts of
Italy were lost again to Austria, English troops took the Scheldt and
Wellington crossed from Spain into France (see page 1083). Unemployment
and poverty was all over France and the stock market fell almost 50% in the
year. The senate and legislature were in open revolt against the emperor and
after a few more military set-backs with the allied armies driving westward
and entering Paris on March 31, 1814, the senate deposed Napoleon and
chose Talleyrand as President of a new republic. The Russian czar
prevented the invading armies from pillaging Paris and arranged for
Napoleon's exile on the island of Elba, with an annual stipend of 2,000,000
francs, which the French government failed to pay.

Louis XVII, grandson of Louis XV, "59 years of age, genial and courteous,
lazy and slow, fat and gouty"[footnote] was called to rule France. He had
the good sense to leave alone the Napoleonic Code, the judiciary and the
structure of the economy, but he soon sided with the Church, which was
demanding that all ecclesiastical property confiscated during the Revolution
should be returned. Meanwhile the Congress of Vienna had stripped France
of her recent territorial expansions, with both Prussia and Austria gaining
much land and power.

Quotation from Durant (Ref. 55), page 730

On the island of Elba, Napoleon, with 400 of his old Imperial Guard and
800 volunteer grenadiers, continued to receive information about discontent
in the French army, the fears of the peasantry about losing their land, the
enforcement of Catholic worship and the continued Jacobin activity. On
February 26, 1815 he loaded his men on 6 ships and sailed for the south
shore of France. By March 20th he entered Paris again, never having fired a
shot and having gained additional troops all along the long journey. Even
General Michael Ney, sent by King Louis XVII with 6,000 troops to stop
Bonaparte, reversed his loyalties, turned and joined Napoleon's march and
was with him as he resumed the exercise of power as Emperor of France.
Ney was later to face a firing squad for this action.

But Napoleon's foreign enemies were now more firmly united against him
than ever and their armies pressed in on him from all sides, even as he
found that France was not truly all united behind him. The most immediate

external danger was from Belgium, where Marchal Blucher had a Prussian
army of 120,000 and the British Duke of Wellington had an army of British,
Dutch, Belgium and German recruits totaling 93,000. In the hope of
challenging these foes one at a time, Napoleon crossed into Belgium with
126,000 men. There were many battles on the flanks and the center, but the
decisive defeat at Waterloo ended Napoleon's dreams, even as urinary tract
stones and-gastric cancer were already beginning to end his life. One
hundred days after his resumption of rule he again abdicated under force
and was banished to St. Helena, 1,200 miles off the coast of Africa. There
he lived, still surrounded by many of his faithful aides, reading many hours
a day from some 400 books (70 by Voltaire) and eventually dictating his
memoirs, until his death supposedly from cancer on May 5, 1821, at the age
of 51 years. Recently one researcher has written that he believes he has
positive evidence that Napoleon died of chronic arsenic
poisoning|footnote], administered by Charles Tristan de Montholon, a count
of the French aristocracy. (Ref. 248) In answer, however, the editors of
"Science" (Ref. 287) have denied this, with "proof" that any arsenic present
in the hair of Napoleon came from the green wallpaper of that time and that
non-fatal doses of antimony used in medicines could also have given false
readings of arsenic in the previous tests.

The evidence is basically that arsenic has been identified from hair which
was allegedly that of Napoleon (Ref. 248)

Overall, the French Revolution led not to popular and republican
government, but to military dictatorship, followed by monarchial
restoration. It did not result in universal suffrage. Property was necessary
and in 1815 only 1% to 3% of the population was qualified to vote. Even as
late as 1846 the total French electorate was estimated at 241,000 or 2.8% of
the total male population over 21 years of age. Yet much was accomplished
in that there was wholesale cancellation of seigneurial rights and f airly
extensive dispersal of land ownership through conf iscation and sale of
church and noble properties, making 19th century France a nation of
peasant farmers. Out of 12,000,000 families in the nation, perhaps 200 to
300 could be called opulent. (Ref. 292) But the canny peasants, unwilling to
divide their land among large numbers of children according to the
Napoleonic Code, restricted the size of their families. The resulting slow
population increase inhibited a really rapid rate of industrialization so that

even at the end of the century industry was still relatively small. A
fundamental French weakness was the dependence on costly overland
transport. A great effect of the war years was to choke off the Atlantic face
of France and build up the Rhine-Rhone valleys’ industries. (Ref. 279) The
government did overcome the old church condemnation of interest with an
1807 law which fixed the interest rate at 5% on loans and 6% on
commercial paper, while anything above that was considered usury. (Ref.
292) There were a few industrial advancements. Having been cut off from
imported sugar by the British counter-blockade early in the century, by
1840 France had built 58 sugar-beet factories. The population control was
helped in 1830 when cholera killed 1,000 people a day. After that the
population of Paris did increase rapidly, however, from 1,242,000 in 1851
to 2,212,000 in 1872. Alfred Sauvy, French sociologist, calculated that
between 1810 and 1900 the purchasing power of the average worker in that
nation increased by 80%. Napoleon's administrative reforms in the Code
Civil contained 2,281 articles and countless amendments and still constitute
the basic French legal text.

Second only to Napoleon in interest and influence in Europe in this century
was Charles Maurice de Talleyrand-Perigord. Born with a clubfoot, he over-
compensated in his young adult days by becoming both a bishop in the
Roman Catholic Church and at the same time a gambling, wenching, rogue.
As one of the leaders of the Revolution, he had written a good part of its
Declaration of the Rights of Man, but by 1794 even he had to escape the
"Terror" by going to America. Back in Paris as foreign minister in 1796, he
had soon insulted an American delegation and accumulated an enormous
private fortune from the bribes of various other foreign delegations and
from "percentages" of such transactions as the Louisiana Purchase, which
he helped to negotiate for Napoleon. In 1808, however, when Napoleon
kidnapped the Spanish royal family so that his brother Joseph could have
the throne and then made Talleyrand the family's jailer, in effect, the
aristocratic French- man suddenly turned from faithful servant to the
emperor's foe. He started correspondence with the Russian czar, setting in
motion the alliances which eventually led to Napoleon's downfall. When the
little emperor was out of power in 1816, a new provisional government,
headed by Talleyrand, called a Bourbon king back to power and extracted
France from its damaging wars. Throughout all that time, that indefatigable

man continued his elegant living - fulfilling his desires with multiple
women, young and old. It is said that the painter Eugene Delacroix was his
natural son. After the Revolution of 1830, Talleyrand survived and
remained in favor with the victorious Duke of Orleans. He served as
ambassador to England from 1830-34, helping to avert another general
European War. Just before his death in 1838, he signed an agreement with
Rome, repenting his multiple sins and re-entering the folds of the Catholic
Church. (Ref. 232)

The end of the Napoleonic era did not terminate internal strife in France.
The successor of Louis XVIII, Charles XI, an ultra-royalist, was
overthrown by revolution in 1830 to be replaced by Louis Philippe, who
reigned only until 1848 when he too was disposed of by revolt. Actually
these "revolutions" were in reality only Paris disorders, which in some other
countries could have been kept under manageable proportions by political
processes, but not in France. After Louis Philippe, the Second Republic was
proclaimed and Louis Napoleon, nephew of Bonaparte, was elected
president. He immediately made himself dictator and emperor, so that the
Second Empire was thus launched in 1852. As Napoleon III, he tried to
follow in his uncle's footsteps, but had not the ability. He wanted a strong
Prussia, a powerful Sardinia-Piedmont, with an Italian Federation, which he
hoped would be favorable to France. As Napoleon I had sold Louisiana to
the United States in 1803 when he desperately needed money, so Napoleon
111 decided on a new venture in America by sending French troops into
Mexico to make the Archduke Maximilian of Austria Emperor of Mexico.
But the French troops were always somewhat anxious there and when the
United States emphasized the Monroe Doctrine after its Civil War,
Napoleon III abandoned Maximilian to his fate at the hands of the
Mexicans. The second French emperor, himself, ended his career as a
prisoner of the Germans in the Franco-German War of 1870, in which
France lost Alsace[footnote], a part of Lorraine and had to pay heavy
indemnities. After a period of German occupation of Paris and another civil
war, a stable French government was finally established as the Third
Republic in 1871. Adolphe Thiers headed the provisional Commune of
Paris and by 1873 Marshal MacMahon, a royalist sympathizer, was elected
president.

This ended the cotton industry for France. (Ref. 213)

French imperialism in Africa and the Far East followed, perhaps as an
antidote for the loss of Alsace and Lorraine. The French also had a
persistent dream of overturning British naval supremacy. Before the War of
1870 they had developed a good start with the development of their mobile,
high f ire-power gun and torpedo boats, but then they had to turn their
money and energies to the land war with Germany. In 1887 Gustave Zede
designed the first practical submarine, although the periscope, which
allowed the aiming of torpedoes while submerged, was not developed until
after the turn of the century.

In 1893 Schneider-Creusot introduced the famous French 75 millimeter
field gun, which revolutionized artillery design. Russia, as France's ally of

279)

In this century Louis Pasteur made great discoveries in chemistry, biology
and medicine and Francois Magendie and his pupil Claude Bernard made
great advances in human physiology. Charles Brown-Sequard is sometimes
considered the founder of endocrinology and Rene' Laennec, working early
in the century is considered one of the great clinicians of all time, best
remembered for his invention of the stethoscope. But still French medicine
was crude in many ways. Blood letting was still a major treatment, but
rather than opening veins, the French started using leeches, importing over
40,000,000 of them in a single year.

This practice was continued until late in the century. The principle of
canning with heat was developed by Nicholas Appert in 1810. Francois
Arago (and Humphrey Davy, independently) discovered that an electric
current could be made to magnetize iron. (Ref. 140, 125, 213) Work was
done in mathematics by Lagrange and Legendre and in histology by Bichat.

THE NETHERLANDS AND BELGIUM

Napoleon's take-over of Belgium caused Britain to enter the war against
him and we have seen above how the final battles and French defeat
occurred on Belgian soil. At the termination of the initial Napoleonic Wars,

the Congress of Vienna created the Kingdom of the Netherlands and gave
William of Holland the Austrian Netherlands as compensation for some
Dutch colonial losses. Since this was the first time that the northern and
southern parts of the Netherlands had been united since the 1 6th century,
there were now many differences in religion and in the economics of the
two sections. The Belgians felt themselves conquered subjects rather than
equals and as part of a July revolution in Paris in 1830, the Belgians rose up
in Brussels and by October had declared their independence from King
William and had separated themselves from the Dutch and the Dutch
language. But there were still two peoples and two languages in the
liberated Belgium.

56% of the people were Flemings in the north, while 32% were Walloons,
speaking French in the south. They elected Leopold as a Belgian king. By
1850 their railroad network was virtually complete and by the last of the
century there was mechanized industry in a great part of Belgium,
spreading out from the Walloon district. Mechanization, however, ruined
the old artisan trade of making guns by hand at Liege, so that city shrank in

BRITISH ISLES

All four of the countries of the British Isles were now united under the
government of Great Britain. The nation went to war with Napoleon when
France took Belgium and Admiral Nelson won a great victory over the
French fleet at Trafalgar in 1805. As we have previously noted, when
Napoleon had control of the continent he established a port and coast
blockade to exclude British goods and this was so effective that England
came close to starvation in the years 1810 and 1811. Within half a century,
however, with the help of great British seamen, the nation overcame that to
build a powerful and civilizing empire, in spite of the fact that at the same
time their King George III had become completely insane. The English,
although socially and economically divided into classes, were in another
sense surprisingly homogenous. They were almost all Protestant, with only
some 60,000 Catholics (chief Iy of Irish origin) and some 26,000 Jews,
almost all of whom lived in London and who were still without civil

liberties. Nevertheless, it was the Jewish banker, Nathan Rothschild who
established a branch bank in London in 1810 and transmitted the subsidies
from England to Austria and Prussia that enabled them to fight and def eat
Napoleon. Thereafter he played a leading role in the industrial and
commercial expansion of England.

Actually England recovered from Napoleon's blockaded ports by
establishing a naval blockade of her own and carried it to the extent of
searching neutral ships, a feature which led to the War of 1812 with the
United States[footnote]. At the peak of mobilization in 1814, some 500,000
men, representing 4% of the active work force of Britain, were in the armed
services. Just as in France, this helped the unemployment situation. After
the Congress of Vienna had restored a balance of power in Europe,
however, England was left loaded with debt and an economic depression
which threatened revolution at the time that William IV came to the throne
in 1830. He helped to pass the Reform Bill, which gave a vote to the middle
classes and enlarged the House of Commons. In the last of the century
England recovered in all ways, economically and politically in particular,
helped in large part by the great ministers - Sir Robert Peel, Benjamin
Disraeli and William F. Gladstone. For nearly 20 years the last two
alternated as prime minister and no one disputed their leadership under the
great Queen Victoria. A number of far reaching social changes occurred,
such as the enfranchisement of urban working men in 1867, the secret ballot
in 1872 and a nearly universal male suffrage in 1884.

This War of 1812 will be discussed in a little more detail in the section on
THE UNITED STATES

After 1870, European alignments began to shape up in preparation for the
great World War of 1912. In England, Gladstone was pursuing a foreign
policy later carried on by Disraeli, which was designed to antagonize the
European continent. In the last decade of the century even the British public
was made aware that the country was being flooded with German goods
and by 1900 the armaments race made it obvious that the real threat lay in
Berlin. Britain had occupied Egyptian soil in 1882 and the unseated French
retaliated by concluding an alliance with Russia, which was already
growing rapidly, with French investment capital. After Britain was firmly
established in the Mediterranean (she also occupied Cyprus in 1877) the old

need to prop up Turkey was gone and that country was left open for
German penetration. In the Boer War of 1899-1902 Britain gained
additional territory in South Africa.

In spite of the apparent political advancements in this century, the common
people of Britain had many problems. Education in England was poor,
overall, with an estimated 2,000,000 children in England and Wales
receiving no education at all in 1806. Women were used to carry coal up
from the mines as much as 100 feet. In Scotland the coal and salt miners
were still legally serfs, bound to the mines for life and even wearing collars
as visible signs of their slavery. (Ref. 213) Other strange things were
occurring in that far northern country. With the idea of clearing the inland
valleys for the raising of sheep, the inhabitants of those areas were forcibly
evicted and sent to the coast where they were supposed to work in fisheries,
but the latter had not yet been built. There was much brutality among the
frightened and weeping people and a few died. The fisheries were never
very successful and again many people left for Canada. A large number of
impoverished highlanders joined the British army. There were frequent
famines, with the worst following the potato blight in 1846. There were also
epidemics of cholera and food riots. Eventually economic recovery and the
Industrial Revolution arrived in Scotland with the establishment of new
coke-fired blast furnaces in some of the desolate regions of the country. The
short-barreled, extra large gun used on Nelson's ships at Trafalgar, the
"carronade", was named for the Carron works in Scotland. (Ref. 170, 279)

By 1810 still some 3/4 of the agricultural laborers in Great Britain were
illiterate, but then there were more people working in trade, manufacturing
and handicrafts than on the farms. In 1812 there was an insurrection in
Yorkshire over the cotton loom. Thomas (Ref. 213) says that if the
government had taken labor's side there would have been no Industrial
Revolution. It was not until 1870 that a national system of elementary
schools, separate from the church, was established in England, although
Scotland had initiated this earlier. In general the British commoners were
still quite coarse in their daily living. Even in 1820 the sewers in London
were inferior to those of Rome in the first century of the Christian era. As
late as 1897 sailors in the British navy were forbidden to use knives and
forks, as this was felt to be unmanly and apt to compromise discipline.

Great Britain, France and Germany all faced agricultural crises in this
century. Railroads, steamships and refrigeration had made it possible for the
vast new areas in Russia, North America, and Australia to sell their grain
and meat in European markets at relatively low prices and the economy
became displaced. In Britain, the fall of wheat and meat prices speeded the
break-up of rural society and undermined the economic foundations of the
landed oligarchy. A disastrous cattle epidemic between 1863 and 1867
added to the agricultural problems so that initially local meat prices soared
and imports rose from 16,000 pounds in 1866 to 22,000,000 pounds by
1871. Later the manufacture of ice led to the fish and chips industry.
Between 1870 and 1900 land devoted to grain diminished by 1/4 as dairy
farming, fruits and vegetables became more common. But even in 1890
83% of children had no solid food except bread and all people tended to get
scurvy, rickets and tuberculosis.

As we noted in the last chapter, modern industrialism began in England and
involved coal and iron, with a technology which f lowered about the
midpoint of this 1 9th century. 30,000,000 tons of coal were mined in 1840
and by 1850 Great Britain owned more net tons of commercial shipping
than France, the United States and the German states all put together. The
importance of military procurement in the promotion of the Industrial
Revolution is of ten overlooked. Mass production of small-arms and a
decisive stimulus to new techniques in artillery were by-products of the
Crimean War, in which deficiencies of the British and French forces became
the source of public scorn. A further byproduct was the discovery of the
Bessemer process for making steel, as Henry Bessemer experimented with
artillery design| footnote] (Ref. 279) In 1870 Britain already produced more
steel than the combined output of France and Germany and then, using the
Bessemer converter and the Gilchrist-Thomas steel process, England
boosted the world output from 540,000 tons in 1870 to 14,600,000 tons in
1895. The British population grew by 10 million in this century. In the 59
years up to 1815 the nation had been at war (chiefly with France) for 37
years and in the year 1814 had 1,062,000 men under arms out of a total of
12,000,000 on the islands and yet the industrial changes went on. A certain
looseness in the texture of British society perhaps stimulated inventiveness
and the strains of war, changes in overseas trading patterns and fluctuations
in the supply of money and the price levels may all have contributed to

weakening traditional resistances to economic changes. From the first
Liverpool-to-Manchester Railway in 1830, a modern railroad system was
completed by 1870. By that time Britain had 60% of the world's steam
tonnage on the seas, but there was still more tonnage registered under sail
than steam. (Ref. 213)

A Patent Office in Great Britain issued 600 patents between 1850 and 1860
pertaining to firearms. (Ref. 279), page 237n

Late in the century British captains of industry tended to rest on their laurels
and the new generation became attracted to the cultivated life of a leisure
class. There was also a definite and deliberate lack of interest among the
industrialists in any pure science and research. Although the aniline dye
industry was started in Britain it was soon taken over by the German
chemists in the 1860s. Still another liability was a law against the modern
joint-stock companies, on the books until 1855, and the prohibition of
limited liability until 1855. Still another British government decision had
world-wide consequences. In 1864 the production of all artillery for the
British services was entrusted to the Woolwich arsenal. Other firms,
including the large Armstrong armament manufacturer, were forced to rely
on foreign sales and this soon resulted in some danger to British security.
Armstrong built a cruiser for Chile in 1882 that could outrun all existing
capital ships, while still maintaining excellent firepower| footnote]. Such
cruisers in foreign hands, plus the new French concentrations on relatively
inexpensive gun-boats and fast torpedo boats, all tended to nullify Britain's
naval preeminence and put her trans-Atlantic supply lines in jeopardy. It
was about 1886 before the government realized that William Armstrong's
private plants would have to be used for naval armaments and ships to keep
England abreast of the rest of the European world. Under a bill passed in
1889 the Royal Navy received even greater appropriations than it had
requested and new ships were built using nickel steel armor and full steam
propulsion. Older ships were re-built and masts removed. Significant
changes in production and technology of land armaments did not occur until
the time of the Boer War in 1899. (Ref. 279)

Altogether Armstrong built 84 warships for 12 different foreign
governments 1884-1914. (Ref. 279)

In spite of industry's lack of interest, some pure science achievements were
made in this period. John Dalton revolutionized theoretical chemistry with
his Atomic Theory, as early as 1804. Humphrey Davy used electrolysis to
discover and isolate sodium, potassium, barium, boron, strontium, calcium
and magnesium and he demonstrated the potentials of producing both heat
and light from electric current. There was public electric lighting in London
in the 1880s. In other fields, there were researches on the nervous system
and brain by Charles Bell and Lister first used antiseptic surgery in 1865,
along with some anesthesia. Simpson of Edinburgh had used chloroform as
early as 1847. As late as 1854 there were still 14,000 cholera victims with
618 deaths in London, even though the city had such great clinicians as
Astley Cooper, Richard Bright, Thomas Addison and Thomas Hodgkin, all
of whom have had diseases named after them and all of whom worked at
the famous Guy's Hospital and Medical School. Noteworthy surgeons of the
era were Benjamin Brodie and James Paget. Dental caries was rampant,
apparently secondary to excess use of sugar and cheap, canned milk.

Early 19th century philosophy was little influenced by science but spawned
some famous doubters such as Tom Paine, who wrote on the fallacies of the
Christian legend; William Godwin, who felt that morality is nothing but a
calculation of consequences and Malthus, who foretold the starvation of
man resulting from his fertility. Britain led the world in literature. It was the
time of the prolific novelist, Sir Walter Scott of Scotland, born in the
preceding century, who wrote such favorites as The Lady of the Lake and
Waverly. In England proper, women led among the novelists, with Jane
Austen, Ann Radcliffe, unhappy Frances Burney and Maria Edgeworth, but
the men dominated poetry. In the Lake District of northwest England, early
in the century, there lived three of England's great poets - William
Wadsworth, Samuel Taylor Coleridge and the worst poet but the greatest
gentlemen. Robert Southey. And then there were the "rebel poets" - Byron
and Shelley - friends, philanderers, travelers and geniuses. Lord George
Gordon Byron of noble heritage was born with a right club-foot, but this did
not prevent him from living and loving extravagantly, in and out of
marriage and in and out of many European countries. He died in Greece in
1824 as the leader of a squad of 600 Suliotes (part Greek, part Albanian
barbarians) in the Greek Revolution. His partner in much of his sin and fun,
Percy Bysshe Shelley, also of lesser nobility parents, was expelled from

Oxford for favoring atheism and then became a renegade poet and lover,
joining Byron in Switzerland and later in Italy. Not yet 30 years of age, he
suffered a nervous breakdown, contemplated suicide and then was drowned
off the coast of Italy in a storm and shipwreck in 1822. He had just written
his last poem, entitled "The Triumph of Life". Last but not least of the poets
was John Keats, who died of acute tuberculosis at the early age of 26 years.

Charles Darwin's Origin of Species in mid-century precipitated a whole
series of profound re-evaluations in philosophy and social thought as well
as another crisis in religious circles. His work, however, was only the end
result of many previous studies. For example, Charles Lyell's Principles of
Geology, published in 1830, had emphasized the theory of
uniformitarianism, that geological history was one of slow, uniform orderly
development brought about by accumulation of constant, small changes.
This was at odds with the Biblical creation. Darwin, himself, refrained from
attacking the Bible, but others, like his friend and publicist, Thomas
Huxley, were not so reticent. Darwinism was even used as an endorsement
of industrial capitalism and laissez-f aire and conversely on the continent,
particularly, as a racist-militarist endorsement that "the strong must rule".

Ireland deserves an additional paragraph or two in the tale of this century.
After the Act of Union of 1800, which joined Ireland to England, Daniel
O'Connell had won the right for Catholics to sit in Parliament and hold
office, by 1829. Then he immediately began to agitate for repeal of the
Union, to free Ireland again. By the 1840s Ireland's population had reached
8,500,000 (almost 3 times its 1973 level) and 4,000,000 of those people
lived almost entirely on potatoes. The American potato had been introduced
in the 1580s and the Irish had become very dependent on that food. When a
parasitic fungus initiated the great potato blight in 1845, there were soon
not only no potatoes to eat but none for seed for the next season and
livestock had to be slaughtered, because they were also without food.
Hunger was soon accompanied by scurvy (because no vitamin C) and then
failing eyesight, acute nervous debilities and sometimes even dementia,
apparently from the lack of vitamins A and B7, which had previously been
obtained from milk. There was a tremendous emigration of the Irish, some
to England, but most to the United States, so that by 1851 some 250,000

were arriving at Ellis Island each year. The famine only increased Irish
bitterness with England and in the 1860s and 70s there was new agitation
for independence, fanned by the Fenians, who acted secretly and violently.
In opposition to that extremism, Charles Stewart Parnell- fought in
Parliament for simple autonomy in internal matters. Some land reforms
were obtained through the help of Gladstone, but to the English the idea of
real separation was unthinkable.

Simultaneous with the great medical tradition that developed in Paris in the
first half of the century, a clinical investigation center arose in Dublin at
Meath Hospital. Three men in particular should be named and, although
trained in Scotland, they became famous as the "Irish School". They were
John Cheyne, William Stokes[footnote], and perhaps the most famous of
all, Robert James Graves, known for his description of toxic goiter (Graves'
Disease) and his bedside teaching. Abraham Colles and Robert William
Smith described the mechanics and treatment of various wrist fractures and
the latter wrote about neurofibromatosis before Von Recklinghausen
described it in 1882, even though the disease bears the latter's name. (Ref.

Cheyne-Stokes syndrome is a well known respiratory arrythmia

SCANDINAVIA

Two completely unrelated facts about Scandinavia, as a whole, are
mentioned here. First it should be noted that the Lapps, living across the
north of all Scandinavia, are the sole European survivors of the old Arctic
reindeer hunting cultures. They call themselves "Saami" and they pursue
fishing, whaling and limited farming in some areas where there is a
warming influence from the Gulf Stream system. They travel on skis,
following the migrating reindeer herds. There are North, South and East
Lappish people, each distinguished by the types of hats they wear. (Ref.
288) The second factor of note is that by mid-century there were railroad
lines in all Scandinavian countries. (Ref. 19)

NORWAY

At the close of the Napoleonic Wars, Great Britain forced Denmark to cede
Norway to Sweden, but the Norwegians ref used to accept the Treaty of
Kiel, proclaimed themselves an independent nation, adopted a constitution
and elected the former Danish governor, Christian Frederick, as their king.
May 17, 1814 became their Independence Day. The Swedes retaliated with
warfare, but in 2 weeks a settlement was made, with the king of Sweden
becoming also the king of Norway, but respecting the Norwegian
constitution and giving, in effect, an autonomous government. The first
king of the two countries under that arrangement was Karl Johann (Charles
John) Bernadotte. In 1884 true parliamentary government came into effect,
although there was still much mutual irritation with Sweden. Near the end
of the century, with industries and shipping growing, the desire for
complete independence again became very strong and just after the turn of
the century (1905) the parliament deposed the Swedish king and elected
again a Danish prince to rule them as Haakon VII. Some Norwegian
merchants became rich using ice for a fresh-fish industry, which replaced
the old salted herring. This was the period of Henrik Ibsen, one of Norway's
literary greats. (Ref. 117, 8, 213)

SWEDEN

In the reign of Gustavus IV (1792-1809) Sweden joined the Third Coalition
against France, thus giving Napoleon an excuse for seizing Pomerania and
Stralsund, which were Sweden's last possessions on the mainland. (Ref. 55)
Then in 1808 a Russian army crossed the Gulf of Bothnia on the ice and
eventually compelled Sweden to cede Finland. The Riksdag deposed
Gustavus IV and chose the king's old uncle, Karl (Charles) XIII to rule.
Some radicals, feeling that new blood was needed in the royal house, then
supplied the childless Karl XII with an adopted crown prince, one Jean-
Baptiste Bernadotte, formerly one of Napoleon's marshals. As a concession
from Napoleon, it was agreed that Norway should be associated with
Sweden under the Bernadotte rule. We have seen above that Norway
resisted this arrangement. In 1810 Bernadotte, whose wife was once
Napoleon's fiancé and was a sister-in-law to Joseph Bonaparte, became

Crown Prince, changing his name to Karl Johann (Charles John). Upon the
old king's death in 1818 Bernadotte then became King Karl (Charles) XIV,
Johann. In the interim he had had time to renounce his old emperor, join
with Russia and Prussia, lead a Swedish army back on to the continent and
help in the final battles against Napoleon. Five Bernadotte kings followed,
all notably able, healthy and democratic. During the century the Riksdag
became a two-chamber congress, industry developed and the middle and
working classes became more important.

Education, science and literature advanced rapidly in Sweden. The
universities of Uppsala, Abo and Lund were among the best in Europe. Jons
Jakob Berzelius was one of the founders of modem chemistry, developing a
table of atomic weights far more accurate than Dalton's and isolating many
chemical e-lements for the first time. Alfred Nobel perfected nitroglycerine
and dynamite. Poets abounded, with perhaps the most famous being Esaias
Tegner, who wrote the "Frithjofs Saga", a series of legends taken from an
old Norse cycle of lays. By 1888 there were 21 translations into English and
19 into German. (Ref. 55)

DENMARK

At the close of the last century in August of 1800, Denmark had joined
Russia. Prussia and Sweden in the Second League of Armed Neutrality,
pledged to resist British search of neutral vessels. Fearing that the combined
naval power of those nations might put an end to her mastery of the seas,
Britain decided that one of those fleets had to be destroyed. Denmark's,
being close at hand, was chosen and attacked in a vicious sea battle off
Copenhagen and most of the Danish ships were disabled or sunk. But
Denmark survived and attempted to continue neutral for another 6 years,
while she rebuilt her seagoing fleet. In 1807 Britain demanded the use of
the entire Danish navy to use against the French and when the Danes ref
used war broke out again. General Wellesley (Duke of Wellington) landed
30,000 English troops on Zealand and after bombarding Copenhagen he
finally seized the naval harbor and all ships in it. This forced the angry
Danish Crown Prince Frederick VII to join up with Napoleon and his

country was sucked up in the European whirlpool, once again ending up on
the losing side.

In the middle of the century, a number of citizens went to the king and
demanded a free constitution and got it. But in both Schleswig and Holstein
there were many German people who wanted German rather than Danish
rule and the Danish king soon had to go to war against the Holstein rebels,
with the unfortunate result that that drew Bismarck into the scene and those
provinces were soon lost to Germany (1866). We have detailed above the
loss of Norway early in the century, but the old Norwegian dependencies of
Greenland, Iceland, the Faroe and Virgin Islands were kept by Denmark.

Between wars the Danes made significant contributions to science,
literature and art. Hans Christian Oersted (1777-1851) founded the science
of electromagnetism through 38 years of experimentation. Bertel
Thorwaldsen (1770-1844) was one of the two greatest sculptors of Europe
of his time. After a Dane invented an improved cream separator, Denmark
developed a large butter industry to go along with bacon production. (Ref.
117, 8, 211)

FINLAND

Finland proper now began to have a denser congregation of true Finns,
displacing a sparse and probably related Lapp population. Russia took
control of the land in 1809 with a sudden, surprise defeat of the Swedish
forces. The Diet was abolished and there was severe oppression by the
conquerors. Late in the century, however, when Czar Nicholas II wanted to
blend the Finns into the Russian Empire, a struggle resulted and led to a
revolution just after the turn of the century in 1905. Actually in essence this
was a great national strike that has seldom been equaled anywhere. It did
force some changes and a new one-chamber Diet was formed with some
political advancements such as freedom of the press and universal suffrage.
The Finns did not obtain their final independence until the Boleshevik
Revolution in Russia in 1917.

The establishment of the modern Finnish language is credited to Johan
Snellman (1806- 1881). Carl Ludwig Engel (1778-1840) was the architect
of the great square of Helsinki. Jean Sibelius (1875-1957) began his
symphony work as the century closed. (Ref. 34, 175)

EASTERN EUROPE

Even as today, in the 19th century most of east Europe belonged politically
to Russia, although there were multiple language groups such as Finnish,
Estonian, Latvian, Polish and some Swedish and German along the coast,
while Great Russian, White Russian and Ukrainian were separate language
groups farther east. Agricultural yields throughout eastern Europe remained
low and, in fact, had changed little from the 16th century. There was no
significant rural surplus and therefore no really prosperous towns. The
dread cholera, coming out of Bengal in 1826, reached south Russia, then
Poland and the Baltic by 1830, before going on to Western Europe. (Ref. 8,
260, 140)

SOUTHERN BALTIC AREA

The southern shore of the Baltic remained throughout this period basically
divided between Russia and Germany. Poland remained dispersed within
the three great empires of Europe, but life went on. The world's first sugar-
beet factory was built in Silesia in 1801. Some quivers of hope appeared
when Napoleon marched into Warsaw at the end of 1806 and the people at
first felt that he was a savior and about to free their country. The Russian
troops had fallen back to their own border after several battles with the
French, but Poland did not survive the Vienna Congress. Once again the
Poles revolted in 1830 and declared their independence in Warsaw in 1831,
but Czar Nicholas' army quickly crushed them in the battle of Ostroleka,
each side suffering some 6,000 casualties. Under Nicholas' orders an
internal campaign attempted to eliminate all traces of dissidence. Polish
universities were suppressed and the Polish army disbanded. Prussia gave
Russia moral support in these activities. (Ref. 8, 211, 135)

Nicholas' successor, Alexander II, at first tried some reconciliation,
allowing exiles to return, the Catholic Church to function and created a new
Warsaw University. But those attempts at reform did not placate the Polish
people and religious ceremonies were used as political demonstrations.
When an attempt was made to conscript dissident Polish youths into the
Russian army, hundreds of young men fled to to the forests and in January,
1863 a revolutionary committee called for an insurrection. It began with an
attack on a Russian soldiers' barracks and the Poles were actually joined by
White Russians and some Ukrainians who wanted agrarian reform. But the
political and social diversity involved allowed General Muraviev and Field
Marshal Paskenvich to put peasant against landlord and in spite of two
years of guerilla warfare against the Russian army, then the largest in
Europe, the Poles lost again. There followed wholesale executions,
confiscations and deportations. Subsequently Poland became the most
industrialized province of the Russian Empire, producing large amounts of
textiles, coal and iron. In the last third of the century, the Russian imprint on
Poland became ever more evident. (Ref. 56)

RUSSIA

Czar Alexander I (1801-1825), although implicated in the murder of his
father Paul, started rule with a true humanitarian ideology and a desire to
liberate his serfs and establish a constitutional government, but the
mechanics of that were difficult and blocked by his ministers and senate.
Before anything could be initiated, he became entangled in European
politics and diplomacy, first as an all y of France and then as an enemy. As
Napoleon invaded Poland, Russia retreated but then hostilities ceased
temporarily with the Treaty of Tilsit, where there was much exchange of
territory and Russia gained Finland from Sweden. Of course, the Russian
army in Finland had helped to promote that. Napoleon sought to keep
Russia happy and thus free his hand in the west against England. But
apparently changing his mind by June, 1812, Napoleon again started for
Russia with 600,000 men. As we have noted in an earlier section,
Bonaparte's army reached an evacuated Moscow, started to freeze and
starve and finally retreated. The Russians cut them down until only 1/5 of
the French army remained alive. McNeill (279) surmises that the Russian

troops were supplied by barge and river boats in summer and sleighs in
winter, allowing great weights to be moved easily and relatively rapidly, in
contrast to the French land carts. It has been estimated that there were about
400,000 burlake, or hauliers, who pulled or propelled boats along the Volga
in about 1815. (Ref. 292) Czar Alexander I followed his troops into central
Europe and then Paris, as Napoleon abdicated. The czar was then influential
in the final peace at Vienna and the subsequent formation of the Holy
Alliance of European monarchs.

Under Czar Nicholas I (1825-55) Russia aggressively added Persian
Armenia to its empire and tried to take over the Balkans, but was thwarted
there by the British. The great Russian army was used during Nicholas'
reign on many diverse fronts; in central Asia (1839-43 and 1847-53); in the
Caucasus (1829-64); against Persia and Turkey (1826-29); against Polish
rebels 1830-311 and 1863); and against Magyar revolts in 1849. It is of
interest that as early as the 1830s the astute Alexis de Tocqueville (Ref.
217) recognized that even then the two greatest nations in the world were
Russia and the United States, although the former centered all the authority
of society in a single arm while the latter relied on the strength and common
sense of the people. The population of Russia increased proportionately
more rapidly in the early century than any other country in the world.

Britain felt that Turkey must be kept independent of Russia and in 1841 an
International Straits Convention closed the Bosphorus to Russian warships.
In spite of that, in 1851 Russians invaded Turkey's Danubian provinces and
in 1853 sank the Turkish fleet, gaining control of the Black Sea. In reprisal,
France and Britain declared war on Russia in 1854 and invaded the Crimea.
In this Crimean War the greatest battle took place at Sevastopol, where
Russia sank her antiquated navy to block the bay, putting the ships' guns on
the shore. But the western powers finally took the great naval base, anyway,
humiliating Russia. Long supply lines[footnote], poor administration, and
obsolete ammunition, along with typhus fever and other diseases
contributed to the eventual f all of the Russians, although the strategy of the
British had also been appalling. This war ended the dominant role of Russia
in southeast Europe. The scandalous condition of the troops and the dead,
sick and wounded of both sides, as depicted by the first war correspondents,
led to the work of Florence Nightingale and this was perhaps the most

positive result of the war. (Ref. 38) The Peace of Paris of 1856 let
Sevastopol stay in Russian hands, but the mouth of the Danube became
international and Russia was barred from having a Black Sea navy. The
treaty was a futile effort to settle the "Near Eastern Question". During the
same period, Russia attempted periodically to take the Caucasus and was
opposed with great fanaticism by the Islamic leader Shamil. Nevertheless,
that area was under complete Russian control by 1864.

About 125,000 peasant carts were requisitioned but forage was almost non-
existent for the draft animals and the ulimate payloads for the army were far
from adequate. (Ref. 279)

Some of the reforms which had been attempted by Czar Alexander I were
actually accomplished by Alexander II as he emancipated the serfs and
established councils for local self-government in the years after 1855. He
refused a national constitution, however, and retained absolute rule, so that
while the serfs were freed from the authority of the gentry, that authority
was simply transferred to the local commune or "mir", which in turn
distributed the land and levied taxes. The Act of Emancipation also divided
the nation into two great classes: (1) gentry and urban classes, and (2)
peasantry. In 1864 there was decreed a Local Government Law or
"Zemstvo" under which each province and each country was authorized to
elect its own assembly. This promoted better education and public health
and through other provisions there was established trial by jury with an
ordinary system of defense and prosecution. Still, many revolutionary ideas
developed in many groups and many sectors in the 1860s and between then
and the end of the century over 500,000 people emigrated to Siberia. The
Nenets, living along the tree-line and north of the Arctic circle were under
the czar's jurisdiction and in 1870 he moved many of them to Novaya
Zemlya to end Norway's claim to that island. (Ref. 288) Anti-semitism was
stronger in Russia than in Germany. Baltic Germans were responsible for
much of this in the Nazi party of the 20th century. (Ref. 213)

Chernyshevsky preached materialism and intellectualism, stating that man's
creative thinking was superior to any spiritual power from above. He was
also a socialist. Pisarev wrote about nihilism, with an intellectual attitude of
extreme individualism. Karakozov promoted the philosophy of terror and
prophesised that all of Europe, including Russia, would soon be in the

flames of revolution. He was executed in 1866. Nechaev formed a society
called "The Peoples’ Justice" and sowed the seeds of anarchism. In P.
Tkachev one finds the forerunner of Bolshevism with such statements as:
"The Russian Revolution, like any other revolution cannot escape hanging
and shooting gendarmes, public prosecutors, ministers, merchants and
priests."[footnote] He said that the goal was a new social order and that in
the original state the revolution might assume the form of a dictatorship of a
minority, but representing in essence the will of the people. Plekhanov
founded the Land Freedom Party, later split into the Populists and the
Terrorists.

As quoted by Mazour (Ref. 135), page 285

In 1877 Russia again tried to intervene in the Balkan revolutions, but once
more backed down as the great powers of Western Europe complained and
in the resulting Congress of Berlin of 1878 all non-independent areas in the
Balkans were given either to Austria or back to Turkey. After an attempt on
the life of Czar Alexander II in 1880, Loris Melikov was appointed virtual
dictator to combat revolution and develop means of stopping revolts. A type
of constitution was devised, but before it became effective Alexander was
killed by a terrorist bomb.

Alexander III began his reign as czar in 1881 and died in 1894, but lived
long enough to resume some diplomatic relations with Europe, while
economic and social problems increased at home. Matters were not helped
by a famine in 1891. Nevertheless, there was continued relentless expansion
into central Asia, with the British becoming alarmed regarding their claims
in India. A great industrial region developed where the Don River empties
into the Sea of Azov around the Donets coalfield. A railroad connecting that
area to the iron-ore fields of Drivoy Rog to the west helped
industrialization. As in the United States, the railroads were fundamental in
creating a modern nation. (Ref. 135)

After 1870 the steel industry grew 500 times faster than in any other
country. Swedish entrepreneurs found oil near the Caspian Sea about 1860
and by 1900 some 10 million tons of oil a year were produced, about half of
that of the world. Although carried out by foreigners, such industrialization
was inspired by the state. Marx, who knew little about Russia, did not

realize that the chief political problem was one of nationalities. Russia, in
1900, had 120,000,000 people dominated by 56,000,000 Greater Russians,
with 22,000,000 Ukrainians and then varying numbers of White Russians,
Poles, Jews, Tartars, Lithuanians, Letts, Germans, Armenians, Estonians,
Finns, Bashkins, Georgians and Circassians. (Ref. 213)

Russian literature was dominated by Alexander Pushkin and Fedor
Dostoevsky, who anticipated much of the 20th century. Russian scientists
excelled in many fields. In mathematics Lobachevsky developed a non-
Euclidean geometry and Sophia Kovalevskava did much work with
calculus, although she was foreign educated and did much of her work in
Sweden. In biology I.I. Mechnikov was a co-worker of Pasteur and
Kovalevsky founded comparative embryology and experimental histology.
In chemistry D.I. Mendeleyev became world famous for his Periodic Table
of the Elements. Physiologists included the well known Ivan Pavlov, who
worked with digestive glands and conditioned reflexes and Timiryazev, who
found the role and significance of chlorophyll. A.S. Popov was a pioneer in
electromagnetic waves and predicted the development of radio.
Tsiolkovsky, who was the father of jet-propulsion and cosmic rocketry did
his work at the end of this century, although it was not published until early
in the 20th. After 1864 local governmental organizations, the "Zemstrovs"
were responsible for medical service to the poor and mentally ill, acting
through the "feldshav", a combined male nurse and pharmacist. Regular
physicians were trained in the large universities. (Ref. 135, 8, 125, 55)

Geographical Presentation of The Indian Subcontinent
Back to Introduction to the Method of Geographical Presentation

All parts of traditional India will be included under this heading and this
means that present day Pakistan, Nepal, Bangladesh, Bhutan and Sri Lanka
will be involved. Please note that this area is approximately the same size as
the Near East and much of it lies at the same latitude. The Indus River
valley, site of one of the world’s earliest civilizations, is now in Pakistan,
while the second great Indian River, the Ganges, terminates, in part, in
Bangladesh. As we shall emphasize in the text, this subcontinent contains
an almost unbelievable mixture of peoples, languages, customs and
religions.

LAL

Indian Subcontinent This map was obtained
from http://english.freemap.jp/index.html

and is used with permission under a Creative
Commons Attribution 3.0 license.)

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NOU BWN RP

The Indian Subcontinent: Beginning to 8,000 B.C.

THE INDIAN SUBCONTINENT

The Indian subcontinent has produced almost no fossil men with the
exception of Ramapithecus from the Siwalik beds and a similar jaw from
Gandakas in Pakistan. These have just recently been put into the human
"line". But men have lived in India since the second interglacial period,
from 400,000 to 200,000 B.C. The hand-axes, chopping tools and flakes of
the early Stone Age are found in the Punjab foothills, the Soan and Beas
valleys, Rajasthan, Malwa and as far south as Madras. Some of these are
reminiscent of the Clactonian of Europe and the Olduvan of Africa. At the
close of the Paleolithic, tiny bladelet tools likethose of the European
Mesolithic Age were being used. From then until about 10,000 B.C. there
was a mixture of archaic and gradually more modern societies, of ten side
by side.

After 10,000 B.C., except for the high mountains, India was covered by
woodland and the modern barren landscape is man-made, due to millennia
of woodland clearance for various reasons. (Ref. 8, 38, 88, 45) (Continue on
page 36)

The Indian Subcontinent: 8000 to 5000 B.C.

THE INDIAN SUBCONTINENT

The Indian Subcontinent: 5000 to 3000 B.C.

THE INDIAN SUBCONTINENT

Peoples of the Indus Valley raised wheat, barley, peas, sesame seeds,
mangoes, dates and citrus fruits on irrigated fields by 4,000 B.C. They used
asses, horses, buffalo, camels and cattle both for meat and draft animals
(Ref. 222) Woven cotton fabric was in the same valley by 3,000 B.C. Major
sites have been unearthed in western India and Pakistan of the ethnic group
called "Brachycephals", who were widely scattered throughout Sind,
Baluchistan and Rajasthan, with elaborate settlements, using copper and
bronze by 39000 B.C. Neolithic sites of cattle raising people living in
villages of wattle and daub or mud huts have been excavated in the Ganges
Valley and the southern peninsula, dating to the 4th millennium B.C. (Ref.
45) (Continue on page 89)

The Indian Subcontinent: 3000 to 1500 B.C.

THE INDIAN SUBCONTINENT
Back to The Indian Subcontinent: 5000 to 3000 B.C.

In addition to the Brachycephals discussed in the last chapter, other ethnic
groups were well established by the 3rd millennium B.C. Negritos, Proto-
Australoids and a Mediterranean people now mainly associated with the
Dravidian Culture and finally the Mongoloids of the northeast and northern
fringes, were all present. The latter were serpent worshiping Nagas, while
the Dravidians were adventurous sailing merchants with cities of refinement
and luxuries. Today the Deccan, in southern India, is essentially Dravidian
in stock, customs and language.

The Brachycephal [footnote] development came to flower in the Indus
Valley cities of Harappa and Mohenjo-daro (now all in Pakistan) with a
civilization which survived for almost a thousand years (2,550 to 1,550
B.C.) with excellent houses, elaborate drainage systems, bathrooms, etc. -
all equal to Sumerian accomplishments and probably superior to
Babylonian and Egyptian cultures. At its height this society extended far
beyond the Indus Valley, itself, (see map on next page) and covered an area
far greater than the contemporary states of Mesopotamia or the Kingdom of
Egypt. Of this, only high citadels, solid buildings, uniform grids of streets
and the elaborate drainage system remain. It was a society of priests,
merchants and peasant farmers with extensive sea trade with Sumer and
Babylonia. There was local script writing by 2,400 B.C. but unfortunately it
has not yet been convincingly deciphered. No one knows even the language
family to which it belongs, although there are thousands of short examples
on stone seals, metal objects and pottery. This civilized area not only
extended all along the Indus and its tributaries but ran for five hundred
miles along the coast of the Arabian Sea, and French archeologists have
also discovered remains of a mature Harappan settlement up in northeastern
Afghanistan close to the Russian border, a thousand miles northeast of the
Indus mouth. The Harappans domesticated the Indian jungle fowl, later to
become the world's "chicken". The women apparently all wore at least loin

cloths, but the men are often shown naked, in the discovered figurines.
There is some evidence to suggest that the Brachycephals were themselves
Dravidians. (Ref. 175)

The disappearance of this as a living civilization has been traditionally
blamed on the destruction wrought by the Aryan invaders from Bactria and
northern Iran who descended into this area between 1,600 and 1,500 B.C..
Although they came primarily as immigrants to find pasture land for their
cattle, they were also strong fighters when combat was necessary, and
gradually all Hindustan (the land north of the Narbada River) was under
control of these people, now called "Vedics". They prohibited intermarriage
with native groups and thus initiated the Caste System in India. Their Aryan
tongue was ancestral to Sanskrit and Sanskrit was a well differentiated
language by 2,000 B.C.. They had a sophisticated theology and well
organized priesthood, both indicating influences of Sumerian and
Babylonian religious ideas. Some authorities put the collapse of the
Harappan civilization somewhat earlier, between 1,800 and 1,700 B.C. and
mention that the streets of Mohenjo-daro when first excavated were lined
with corpses. If the invading Aryans were not responsible, other
possibilities included a change in the course of the Indus, or a terrible
drought. It is of interest that many Indus settlements were in areas where
today there is nothing but dry sand and agriculture would be impossible.
Apparently in those ancient days rainfall and river water had been more
plentiful and this has been confirmed by archeological pollen counts, These
pollens, which were in great numbers in the lowermost layers later dropped
in the upper layers of excavation and were then chiefly of desert plants,
indicating an obvious drought. One theory of the cause of this has been put
forward by Reid Bryson of the University of Wisconsin, who feels that with
increasing population of the Indus civilization the forests were destroyed
for fuel and timbers, and the resulting deforestation accelerated the run-off
of rain, decreasing soil moisture and lowering the fertility from erosion and
top-soil loss. Then with overgrazing, a man-made desert appeared, with
rising dust which, in turn, clouded and cooled the upper atmosphere, with
the resulting heavier, cool air sinking downward and preventing rain. Thus
it is possible that the Indus people, pushing their environment to the limit,
caused their own downfall and near extinction. In any event, life did

continue in the valley but without the highly organized culture previously

[missing_resource: fixMe.jpg]

Indus Civilization

By 2,000 B.C. Pan chewing was a well established practice in India. Pan is
the Betel nut, and like cocaine it is part narcotic and part stimulant. We have
mentioned that the Aryans brought live stock with them, particularly cattle.
They ate beef, mutton, milk, and curds and used the cooking medium "ghi",
a Clarified butter, which can be kept for months. They introduced this heavy
dependence on dairy products, reinforced by precepts from the Vedas,
which led slowly to a belief in the sacredness of the cow, a precept still
existing today. (Ref. 211)

Very recent excavations at Balakot on the Arabian Sea coast of southern
Pakistan indicate the possibility of a civilization even earlier than the
Harappan, with well developed ceramics and the use of copper. In the far
south in Sri Lanka, the first inhabitants were the Veddas, who emerged there
about 3,000 B.C. Only a few of the descendents of these aborigines still live
in the mountainous area. (Ref. 44, 38)

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The Indian Subcontinent: 1500 to 1000 B.C.

THE INDIAN SUBCONTINENT

Between about 1,500 and 1,200 B.C. there were successive waves of Aryan
charioteers and bowmen moving south from eastern Iran to the Indus
Valley. By 1,050 these Rig-Vedic Aryans, with their vigorous, objective and
warlike attitude toward life, had extended their domain from the Swat
Valley of Afghanistan to the land of the "Seven Induses", and then they
moved eastward toward the Ganges. In the Rig-Veda, or first period of the
Aryans, goat, horse, sheep and buffalo could be eaten but only barren cows,
but by 1,000 B.C. the Atharva-Veda forbade eating even barren cows. The
Vedic civilization accumulated a great literature transmitted verbally in the
Sanskrit language as the "Vedas" (Books of Knowledge). These were later
written down, but probably after 1,000 B.C. Hinduism|[ footnote] developed
from the ancient Sanskrit chants with the concept of Brahman, the Supreme
Being, ruling over man and all of a multitude of deities, many of them
animistic. The soul of each man (Atman) through many incarnations
eventually wins liberation from worldly existence to achieve union with
Brahman. Below the level of Brahman in the Hindu pantheon is the trinity
of Brahma the creator, Vishnu the preserver and Shiva the destroyer.
Brahma is held too sacred for popular rites, but Vishnu and Shiva are
worshiped in hundreds of guises and forms and customs. Vishnu has ten
chief avatars or forms in which he descends to earth, including Rama of the
Ramayana legend, Krishna, hero of the Mahabharata epic, and Buddha, of
historical significance. (Ref. 8, 211, 25)

The name "Hinduism" is derived from the name of the Indus River

Although ancient Indian society was divided into colors or "varnas", later
the last term stood for a grouping according to vocation: Brahmins as
priests and scholars; Kshatriyas as rulers and soldiers; Vaishyas, the
merchants and farmers; Sudras, the peasants and serfs. All of this developed
into the hereditary caste system with eventual emergence of some 3,000
sub-castes. As early as 1,000 B.C. steel was made in India, by melting iron
at 1,500 degrees Centigrade and adding less than one percent carbon. (For
contrast, copper melts at 500 degrees). Agriculture, as in ancient Iraq and

China, depended on irrigation, and this was the most time consuming part
of the farmers’ work. (Ref. 25, 21, 213)

(Continue on page 146)

The Indian Subcontinent: 1000 to 700 B.C.

THE INDIAN SUBCONTINENT

In the last chapter we discussed the southern and eastern expansion of the
invading Aryans. Their migration soon became sharply limited because the
"forest people" they encountered had endemic tropical and parasitical
infestations flourishing in the moist, warm climate which meant death and
destruction to the invaders. The aboriginal forest people were only
gradually incorporated in special castes, thru in effect isolating them from
the conquerors, and this was another element in the development of the
caste system. It was only after some adaptation to disease and the advent of
iron, in about 800 B.C., that the Aryan Vedics began to actually clear the
forest of northern India preparatory for farming and large scale agriculture.
(Ref. 140, 8)

In the south, tiny communities developed in the fragmented land, each with
its own religious, political and economic life. Distinctive megalithic
cultures grew up around Madres, Kerala and Mysore. Sea-faring peoples at
the tip of the peninsula traded by sea with the Middle East, shipping ivory,
spices and the cotton plants to Mesopotamia. It is of considerable interest
that doimens, very similar to those of Europe's second and third millennia
B.C., have been found throughout India, but none seem to date before the
8th century B.C. and some much later. (Ref. 8, 136, 215)

The organization and writing of the Vedas rituals began about 1,000 B.C.
and probably continued for 500 years. The writing of the Upanishads began
about 800 B.C. and continued for about 300 years. The latter consisted of
108 discourses by various teachers, saints and sages with the resulting
opinions and philosophies of many men. The belief in transmigration
appeared there. According to Toynbee's theories (Ref. 220) this is the height
of the original Vedic Society. Of incidental note is the legend in Sri Lanka
that King Solomon sent emissaries to the fabled city of Gems, Ratnapura, to
get precious stones with which to woo the Queen of Sheba. (Ref. 108)

The Indian Subcontinent: 700 to 601 B.C.

THE INDIAN SUBCONTINENT

The Vedic Culture continued in Pakistan and northern India, but there was
now a shift of emphasis from the region of the Indus to the Ganges River
plains, where previously existing villages now became true city-states. The
jungles of the Ganges area could not be cleared until iron axes and plows
were available. That new metal - iron - also changed warfare to regulation
infantry and cavalry. Farther south, Kosala and Magadha kingdoms were
built by marcher lords of that area. (Ref. 45, 211) (Continue on page 185)

The Indian Subcontinent: 600 to 501 B.C.

THE INDIAN SUBCONTINENT

The Vedic Culture began to decay or at least to stagnate, so that Darius I of
Persia had little trouble in seizing Gandhara from the disunited Aryans, and
the entire area soon became divided into many small states. Darius' advance
into the Indus Valley marked the introduction of coinage, iron
working|footnote] and writing into Pakistan. Although powerful and
extensive kingdoms developed in the Ganges Valley at that time, they
always remained unstable and were never consolidated into an enduring
whole, as in China, and one reason was the heavy micro-parasitism
characteristic of the warm, wet Ganges climate. This heavy infestation and
infection must have reduced individual vigor and capacity for physical
labor, and is probably one reason that Indian empires were fragile and
subject to easy conquest by invaders from the north, until the invaders
themselves became infested. The transcendentalism that became
characteristic of the Indian religions accorded well with the circumstances
of poverty-stricken, disease ridden peasants. In Toynbee's (Ref. 220)
terminology, it was a "time of troubles" and as usual in such situations, new
philosophies and religions began to appear to save man or lift him out of the
drudgery of his life. By this time, the caste system was well established at
least in northern India. Benares, at the gentle four mile curve of the Ganges,
was already the goal of thousands of Hindus who went there to bathe and
drink its water and to beseech the favor of some god. (Ref. 136, 140, 37,
220)

Some believe there was iron smelting in India as early as 800 B.C. (Ref.
213, page 271)

Gautama Buddha, scion of the aristocratic Gautama clan living at the foot
of the Himalayas, was born in 563 B.C. He left his family and after an
initial withdrawal period with self mortification, he returned to the active
world to teach his ideas of ethics. He did not write, but talked, a man of
strong will, authoritative and proud, but of gentle manner and speech and of
infinite benevolence. His idea of Nirvana was complete annihilation. Later,
a legend of divine birth appeared among Buddha's followers, but he,

himself, claimed no divine origin and in fact was in essence an atheist,
worshiping no god, having no ritual and interested only in ethics.

In the middle of this century there also appeared another religion founded
by Mahavira and called "Jains". Mahavira taught that the road to release
from the tragedy of life was to be found through ascetic penances and
complete "ahimsa". The latter means abstinence from injury to any living
thing. Gandhi was later strongly influenced by this sect. Neither Buddhism
nor Jainism accepted the caste system, which was Hindu in origin, and both
were opposed to violence and to any animal slaughter. The Jains even had
to be careful in eating any fruit or vegetable, as it might contain an insect
which might be a human soul in re-in- carnation. Finally, the only animal
protein food in India was an occasional chicken or, on the coast, fish and
seafood.

Aryan invaders from north India arrived in Sri Lanka in this or the
preceding century and the present day majority Sinhalese ( seven out of ten
Sri Lankans) claim descent from them. They are Buddhists and theirs is the
official language of the island. (Ref. 136, 211)

(Continue on page 207)

The Indian Subcontinent: 500 to 401 B.C.

THE INDIAN SUBCONTINENT (THE THIRD GREAT
CENTER OF CIVILIZATION)

Back to The Indian Subcontinent: 600 to 501 B.C.

This was a continued time of troubles in India, with political deterioration.
While previously there had been some sixteen great realms along the rich
Gangetic plain, the number was now gradually reduced to four - the three
kingdoms of Kasi, Kosala and Magadha and the Republic of Vrijji.
Nevertheless, some of the arts and sciences flourished in this valley. Most
of the Indus Valley remained under Persian control. (Ref. 136)

The direction of growth of India and some of its limiting factors had been
pretty well determined in this century in which Buddha died. By the end of
the century Buddhism had already faded in this land of its birth and the
major outlines of the religious world-view which was to govern all future
Indian history had emerged, although not yet organized in its present day
form. (Ref. 46)

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The Indian Subcontinent: 400 to 301 B.C.

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After a century of wars, the kingdom of Magadha absorbed the other three
great realms of Gangetic India and established a capital at Pataliputra
(Batna) on the lower Ganges. In 327 B.C. Alexander reached India, taking
about one-half of the country and making King Porus a puppet ruler over
the most northern portion. Only seven years later, however, Chandragupta
Maurya overcame the Macedonian garrisons and annexed all land east of
the Indus and south to the Narmada River. In 303 B.C. he defeated
Alexander's successor, Seleucus Nicator, and obtained the Greek province
of Trans-Indus which included a large part of Afghanistan. This Mauryan
government then became the most powerful then existing in the world, with
a civilization at least equal to that of the Greeks. Taxila was a city of great
universities; there were no slaves. Cotton clothing, made from a Burmese
import, was widely worn, although India soon developed its own cotton
supply. Government administration was controlled by the vizier, Kautilya, a
Brahman who knew the political value of religion but took no moral
guidance from it. This became an autocracy which Toynbee recognizes as
the "universal state" of the original Vedic Society. This is thought to be the
time of Panini's Sanscrit Grammar, which codified the rules for "classical"
Sanscrit, as derived from the Vedas. (Ref. 8, 213, 220)

The ancient city of Anuradhapura was built in Sri Lanka in this century and
it lasted until the 11th century of the Christian Era. It was located in the
lowlands northwest of Polomnaruwa and was supplied by a water system
which is still in use today, although the city itself is buried. There are
multiple lake reservoirs and bell-shaped housing relics of the Buddha, some
as high as forty stories. (Ref. 108)

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The Indian Subcontinent: 300 to 201 B.C.

THE INDIAN SUBCONTINENT
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Ashoka Vardhana (also Asoka), grandson of Chandragupta, came to the
throne in 273 B.C., monarch of Afghanistan, Baluchistan and all of modern
India except Tamil Land in the extreme south. At first he ruled well,
although cruelly. In midlife he became intensely interested in Buddhism,
changed his ways, joined a Buddhist order and became an ardent
missionary and zealous administrator. He was hated by the Brahmins, the
priestly class of the old religion, and in spite of Ashoka's Buddhism it was
in this century that Hinduism finally evolved with a new generation of
gods; Shiva, Vishnu, Rama and Brahma. (Ref. 213)

On the "Rock Edicts of Ashoka" appear "Arabic" numerals - a thousand
years before they appear in Arabic literature. These numerals are one of our
great heritages from India. Among inscriptions of this century are
statements that hospitals had been established for humans and for animals,
although it is not clear if these were the first. Elaborate dispensaries and
special maternal and operating facilities were also described. (Ref. 125)
Most artisans of the Maurya Empire worked in guilds which eventually
developed many features similar to trade unions. (Ref. 213) After Ashoka's
death, the empire was split into a number of parts.

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The Indian Subcontinent: 200 to 101 B.C.

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The Iranian Yue-chi (Tocharians), run out of central Asia by the Hsuing-nu,
ended up south of the Pamirs, in northern Pakistan. (Ref. 101) The great
Maurya Dynasty ended with the death of King Brihadratha in 185 B.C. and
the history of the next five centuries has been pretty well lost in obscurity. It
is known that the Maurya were at least partially overthrown by the
Pushyamitra from the Ganges Valley and that they then established the
Sunga Dynasty. This was a Brahmin dominated group which caused the
Buddhists to retreat to other areas where there was soon a flowering of
Buddhist sculpture. Some Greeks, Syrians and Scythians conquered the
Punjab and established a Greco-Bactrian Culture under Demetrius, the
Greek Bactrian king, and it existed for some 300 years.The Deccan in the
south became separated from the rest of India with the formation of the
Tamil states. These people were Dravidians, a dark-skinned race which
some believe to be a mixture from Mediterranean, Australoid and
Melanesian origins.

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The Indian Subcontinent: 100 B.C. to 0

THE FAR EAST

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CHINA AND MANCHURIA ("Former" Han Dynasty continued)

At its peak the Han Empire under Wu-Ti was exceedingly prosperous,
rivaling Rome both in size and wealth. The capital city Ch'ang-an had
250,000 in a total empire population of about 57,000,000. While the
progress of mechanization was impeded in Greece and Rome by the number
of available slaves, China had too many efficient coolies. (Ref. 260) We
noted above that Wu-Ti expanded into the Tarim Basin in the west by
defeating the Hsiung-nu and this pursuance continued even after Wu-Ti's
death. In 51 B.C. the chieftain of the southern Huns came to Ch'ang-an to
submit as an Han vassal, while the northern group continued to be chased
far westward into Samarkand, there to be finally defeated by a five-pronged
Han force in 36 B.C. But in China proper the economic controls lapsed and
nepotism and cronyism resulted in the loss of the imperial family's power.

A type of national university had come into existence to prepare men for
bureaucratic careers and by the end of the century the enrollment had
reached 3,000. In the Han militia system all males registered for military
service at 21 years of age and were eligible for service between the ages of
23 and 56 years. Allegedly every male was to have military service in his
home county one month every year and one year of continuous service
sometime in a guard unit, but soon a practice of paying poorer men to serve
one's time became standard practice. In addition to using cowrie shells as
currency, copper coins, later called sapekes by the Europeans, came into
use. Both of these competed with salt and grain as a medium of exchange.
(Ref. 260) In this century the Chinese drilled deep holes, presumably for
water, in Szechwan and their drilling methods were copied centuries later in
the United States. (Ref. 213)

In early China the laws required punishments and torture that equaled that
seen in Europe at a much later period. Death penalties were carried out by
beheading or by chop- ping the offender in two at the waist. In cases of
treason or some equally serious crime, all the offender's relatives might also
be put to death. Lesser offenders might simply be mutilated by tattooing,
amputation of nose or feet or castration. Imprisonment was rare, but hard
labor on government construction was used for minor offenders. In
Emperor Ch'eng's reign (32 - 7 B.C.) authority was delegated to his
mother's family, the Wang clan. Ssu-me Ch'ien was a great Chinese
historian of this era. (Ref. 8, 101)

In Manchuria a new state of Koguryo was founded in this century and soon
also included northern Korea.

JAPAN

The Yayoishiki Culture continued into this century with rice culture
appearing about 100 B.C. Animism and totemism, sex and ancestor worship
satisfied the religious needs of these early Japanese. Out of the latter
worship came the oldest official living religions of the nation - Shinto. This
faith, called the Way of the Gods, took three forms; the domestic cult of
family ancestors, the communal cult of clan ancestors and the state cult of
the imperial line with its founding gods.

A Mongolian castaway group on Kyushu multiplied so rapidly as farmers
that they took over all the arable land on the island and while some of the
aborigines became serfs, others took to the hills from where they continued
to raid the farmers for centuries. The new Kyushu community was
organized as a loose confederacy of villages, each ruled by its own
matriarch or fertility mother, and the woman leader of the most powerful
town was called the "Sun Goddess". Early Chinese traders called her
"Pime-ko", or "Hime-Ko", meaning "Sunshine Child". (Ref. 213, 136, 12)
In an attempt to obtain more sea-food to feed the expanding population, a
great ship-building effort was made in 81 B.C. (Ref. 222)

KOREA

Most of Korea was controlled by the Han Chinese at this time, but the
northern portion was allied with Manchuria in the new state of Koguryo.

SOUTHEAST ASIA

Already controlling North Vietnam, the Chinese now added central Viet
Nam to their territory which they were to maintain for centuries. No other
significant changes occurred.

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The Indian Subcontinent: 0 to A.D. 100

THE INDIAN SUBCONTINENT
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In the first half of the century for a brief period the great trading city of
Taxila in north India (now Pakistan) was controlled by Indo-Parthians, and
the surrounding Saka area had predominantly a Greek culture in spite of the
Iranian genealogy. All this ended about A.D. 60 as the Tocharians and the
mighty Kushan tribes took over this area. The Kushans reached Benares
(150 miles west of Patna) destroying the Sakas as they went. In the far east,
a Buddhist civilization flourishing in Bengal was forced to abandon that
faith by a Hindu dynasty which subsequently oppressed the native people.
(Ref. 8, 18, 37)

The Deccan of India was ruled by the Buddhist Satavahana Dynasty while
the Munda kings continued to control southern India. The southern coast
now assumed new importance because of the sea links between China,
India and the Mediterranean world. Pliny complained that India's spices,
jewels, muslins and exotic animals were costing Romans 550 million
sesterces a year. Also shipped out were turquoise, diamonds, spikenard,
indigo, silk yarn and tortoise-shell, while imports were wine, pearls, copper,
dates, gold and slaves from Ethiopia, Arabia and the Mediterranean.

Christianity may have reached India even this early in that the apostle
Thomas is supposed to have founded the Syrian Church in Malabar before
being killed in A.D. 68. This is usually given as the time of Charaka, the
great Indian physician who composed an encyclopedia of medicine still
used in that country, but he may have lived much earlier. He listed 500
medicinal plants and developed a rather unsystematic catalogue of diseases
and cures. His description of what constituted a good hospital would do
credit to any today. The Prakrit language became the chief medium of the
Buddhists and Jains and Sanskrit faded except in the professional writing of
the Brahmins. (Ref. 213, 19, 8, 125)

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The Indian Subcontinent: 101 A.D. to 200

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Under their greatest king, Kanishka (ca. 120 - 160), the arts and sciences
flourished among the Kushans. After experimenting with many religions,
the king finally chose the new mystical Buddhism and called a great council
of Buddhist theologians to formulate this creed for his realm. The council
lowered Buddha's philosophy to the emotional needs of the common soul
but raised Buddha to a divinity, thus laying the basis for the Mahayana or
Greater Vehicle Buddhism which later helped to win China and Japan. It is
a variation of Buddhism which shows definite influence from the Greek
religions. The Kushan rule extended from Benares and Kabut to the
Vindhyas, with a capital at Peshawar.

Some further discussion of the confusions which surround the history of the
Kushans seems relevant. It has been mentioned previously that they were a
mixture of Yu~e-chi tribes (some say five tribes), but the Chinese name is
misleading in that they spoke a variety of Iranian languages. Wells wrote
that the Yue-chi had originally been pushed over into western Turkistan by
Hun peoples who conquered the Bactrians and then mixed with Aryan
elements there to create the fusion known as Indo-Scythians who then went
over the Kyber Pass down into India. This is not the current concept which
is that the Kushans were entirely Indo-European. After the middle of the
century, foreign kingdoms in the north began to fade and indigenous Indian
groups emerged. (Ref. 229, 8)

Buddhism now became divided into two schools, the mystical Mahayana,
or Greater Vehicle, mentioned above, and the Hinayana or Lesser Vehicle,
also called Theravada Buddhism or Way of the Elders, which retained much
of the primitive simplicity of the original philosophy. The particular branch
of this religion dominant in Kashmir, the Sarvastivadin, was one of two
main off-shoots of the Hinayana but Hindu faiths existed at the same time,
with Siva as the most favored deity. Kanishka established a city in his own
name in Kashmir in this century. Throughout all these early centuries of the

Christian era, the region of Kashmir was subject to incursions of Sakas,
Kushans, Tibetans and Huns from the north as well as migrations of
Gujaras from the south. Kashmir kept contact with Gandhara in present day
Pakistan and shared some of the artistic blending of Hellenic and Parthian
influences. (Ref. 114, 275)

The Deccan was still dominated by the Munda kings. In Malwa there was a
dynasty of Satraps of Ujjain, a community which became a center of
Sanskrit learning and was taken as the basic meridian by Indian
astronomers. In the far south of India it was Hinduism which flourished.
Sanskrit influence is clear in the Tamil language grammar although not
much else of Aryan India penetrated Tamil. The basic devotion was to the
Hindu gods of Vishnu and Siva. Indian art was influenced by Greek
sculpture and their science was influenced to some degree. Sri Lanka was
briefly occupied by the Tamils in this century.(Ref. 8)

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The Indian Subcontinent: A.D. 201 to 300

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The Kushan rule in India faded away. Ujjain, in Malwa, continued as a
capital and center with a continued dynasty of Western Satraps. The
Buddhist community was now definitely divided into Hin-ayana and
Mahayana groups, but in the far south Hinduism was the more important.
Brahman colonies with Hinduism and the caste system were imported from
the Ganges Valley at various periods and endowed by local rulers. This was
done in Bengal. About 225 in Maharashra, the break-up of the Satakani
Empire led to the establishment of the Traikutka Dynasty from local
pastoral tribes. They eventually even took over the throne at Ujjain.

Sanskrit now began to be revised as a more common language, after several
hundred years of partial banishment. This attested the prestige of the
Brahminical tradition and proved the effectiveness of the numerous
educational institutions of the land. It might be appropriate to insert here,
that not all of the Brahman caste were priests. Although they were, in Hindu
tradition "born twice", once at delivery and once at age six when a double
stranded gut of sacred thread was looped around their necks, their privileges
were not necessarily either economic nor purely religious. Some were poor
farmers, some mailmen, some workers of other trades, but all supposedly
lived by many daily rituals. (Ref. 119, 37)

Possibly originating in India in this century (otherwise in China) was a high
quality carbonized steel made by a crucible smelting process unknown in
Europe until the 1 9th century. This came to be known as Damascus or
damask steel in Europe and was used particularly to make swords of
amazing sharpness. Ingots of this were exported from India to the Far East,
Arabia, Syria, Russia and Persia. (Ref. 260)

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The Indian Subcontinent: A.D. 301 to 400

THE INDIAN SUBCONTINENT

The power of the Kushans continued to fade and a line of native kings
appeared in the Gupta Dynasty, beginning with Chandragupta I in A.D. 320,
based in Magadha. His successor, Samudragupta, in a 50 year reign, became
one of the foremost monarchs in India's long history. He conquered Bengal,
Assam, Nepal and southern India and with the wealth thus gained promoted
literature, science, religion and the arts. It was the Golden Age of India,
while Europe and China were falling into what many have labeled the
"Dark Ages". Buddhist art reached its zenith. The decimal system was used
here long before the Arabs and Syrians used it. Chemistry developed from
two sources — medicine and industries such as dyeing, soapmaking, tanning
and the manufacture of glass and cement. The making of solid sugar by
boiling cane juice was begun in this century. The Iranian frontier standing
between the steppes and India secured the latter against invasion and thus
indirectly contributed to the flowering of the Indian culture. Toynbee (Ref.
220) considers the Gupta Dynasty as a resumed Indian universal state after
the Hellenic interruption of Alexander's conquests. (Ref. 46, 229, 220, 213)

The great Hindu epic poems, the Mahabharata and Ramayana, were written
down in Sanskrit in this period. The first of these was three and one-half
times as long as the entire Bible. The Brahmans, the priestly class of the
Hindus, were again growing in wealth and power and by the end of the
century they finally won out over the Buddhists and established a universal
religion of Hinduism. This emerged from older Brahminism through re-
evaluation of a multiplicity of local worships.

Sushrata (also Susrata or Susruta) was a great Indian surgeon who did many
advanced surgical procedures, including cataract operations, hernia repairs,
lithotomies and Caesarian sections. Cataract was treated by couching
(displacing the lens downward); amputations were common and several
types of plastic surgery procedures were done. Since cutting off the nose
was an official punishment for adultery, Indian surgeons developed
elaborate flap operations turning skin down from the forehead to
reconstruct a nose. Sushrata also excelled at plastic repair of torn ear lobes.

His armamentaria included 121 surgical instruments. He recommended the
observations of corpses as a means of learning anatomy but demands of
ritual purity prevented dissection. Some 1,120 diseases and 760 medicinal
plants were classified. Physicians were taught in apprenticeships and then
subjected to certification by the ruler. The neophyte finally took an oath, not
unlike the Hippocratic oath of Greece. (Ref. 46, 125) (Continue on page
400)

The Indian Subcontinent: A.D. 401 to 500

THE INDIAN SUBCONTINENT
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The Gupta civilization continued to flourish in northern India, but at the
close of the century a new barbarian eruption shattered the peace as the
Ephthalites overran and invaded northwestern India from central Asia.
There is still apparently some confusion about the make-up and origin of
these invaders. McNeill (Ref. 139) calls them a branch of the Mongol Juan-
Juan but other authorities (Ref. 8) insist that they were of a white, Turkish
race, not Mongoloid. At any event, although they had made some raids as
early as 455 by 480 they had destroyed the Gupta Empire, never to be
restored, and they had demolished the Buddhist monasteries.

In western India many impregnable fortresses in Rajputana kept the Asian
invaders out and the local power was divided among several local
dynasties. A Pallava warrior dynasty controlled the Deccan and there were
many local altercations with the adjacent Chalukyas.

Individual accomplishment is often independent of external rule and so in
spite of the turmoil of this period in India, Aryabhata (A.D. 499) wrote a
mathematical works for use in astronomical calculations. Much was
borrowed from the Greeks but some innovations appeared, including a
unique system of numerical notation. He was familiar with the decimal
system and with zero, although he did not actually use the latter. He taught
the theory of the rotation of the earth and gave the value of Pi at 3.141.

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The Indian Subcontinent: A.D. 501 to 600

THE INDIAN SUBCONTINENT

Chaos continued from the Ephthalite invasions throughout the failing Gupta
Empire in the north. The invaders were finally defeated by a Hindu
confederation in 528 but they had profoundly affected the caste system and
disrupted the heirarchy of ruling families. Some Ephthalites stayed in India
as a distinct group. In spite of the warfare, great scientific progress was
made in this northern India area, with advances in chemistry such as
calcination, distillation, sublimation, production of light without heat, the
mixing of anesthetic and soporific powders and the formation of metallic
salts, compounds and alloys. Brahmagupta, the astronomer, lived near the
end of the century and systematized rules of arithmetic, algebra and
astronomy and developed an integral solution of an indeterminate equation.
(Ref. 38, 46)

The third branch of Buddhism, Tantric, appeared in the Himalayan lands,
interlacing Mahayana Buddhism with old Tantric cults of India that invoked
deities by magic and rituals. There was a large array of divinities both male
and female, along with demons. (Ref. 114)

The Deccan was not unified again until about 550, under the western
Calukya Dynasty. Southern India remained essentially Dravidian, but little
is known of its detailed history and nothing of its art until the end of this
century when the Pallavas ruled from north of Madras to the sacred river,
Kaseri, and had sculptures and cave temples. Still farther south were the
Pandyas and Ceras. (Ref. 19)

In Ceylon, the original Veddas were conquered by Sinhalese invaders from
northern India and the Veddas survive today only as a small group in the
remote interior. (Ref. 175) (Continue on page 445)

The Indian Subcontinent: A.D. 601 to 700

THE INDIAN SUBCONTINENT

Harsha-Vardhana (also Sri Harsha), a scion of the Gupta line, recaptured
and unified northern India in 606 and, ruling from Kanauj, gave peace and
security to the area for 42 years. Arts and letters flourished and the
Buddhist religion had a revival. At his death, however, chaos again ensued
and India had her "Dark Ages" for the next 1,000 years. By the middle of
the century a Chinese "tourist" reported that there were 70 kingdoms in the
country. The two principal dynasties in western India were the Maitrakas,
who created a Buddhist scholastic center, and the Gurjara, a horde of central
Asiatics, who had settled in the central Rajputana.

The Deccan, on the plateau in southern India, remained independent under
the Calukyas Dynasty. (Ref. 19) Under one of their more famous kings,
Pulakeshin, this country controlled and commanded respect from a good
deal of territory, including central India. It was the time of the famous
frescoes of Ajanta. At the very southern tip of India the Pandyas Dynasty
had a capital at Madurai and the Pallavas at Kanchipuram. The latter
controlled the rich coastal area on the east, while similar land on the west
coast was controlled by the Cheras in the region now called Kerala.

Hinduism developed two sects - Vaishnavism (worship of Vishnu) and
Shaivism (worship of Shiva). As these increased in popularity Buddhism
and Janism shrank in importance. The speech of ordinary people diverged
more and more from the Sanskrit of the intellectual and the population of
about 100,000,000 remained quite constant. (Continue on page 467)

The Indian Subcontinent: A.D. 701 to 800

THE INDIAN SUBCONTINENT

The Moslems became established in the Indus Valley, taking Sind in A.D.
711, and they also took over the central Asian oases north of the Hindu
Kush, while Moslem shipping took over control of the Indian Ocean, thus
almost isolating Hindu India. The Himalayan borderlands remained beyond
Moslem reach. Kashmir and Bengal had become powerful states soon after
the 6th century and continued throughout the period under review.
Magnificent Buddhist temples were constructed in Kashmir at this time.
(Ref. 275) There were no powers in the north of India equal to those in the
south but by the end of this century two new dynasties, the Palas of Bengal
and the Pratiharas of Rajasthan began a struggle for the control of northern
India. The former were Buddhists with strong ties to Tibet and kept the old
religion alive at a time when it was disappearing elsewhere in India. It was
from this group that Tibet got their Tantric form of Buddhism in this
century. The Guijaras of western India united with Pratihara and together
they succeeded in keeping out the Moslems for another two centuries.

In the Deccan, the Rashtrakutas overthrew the Chalukyas in 753 and began
a 200 year rule. They built the greatest of the Indian rock-cut temples. The
watrior kings of the Pallava continued to rule a part of the Deccan,
however, as they had for almost 500 years and in their empire assemblies of
village leaders, guilds and professional groups were held annually, making
a unique form of democracy. At the last of the century, in the east, the
eastern Chalukya Dynasty began to exert some control as a Buddhist clan
with unique Buddhist bronzes. Kalinga was ruled by the eastern Gangas. In
southern India, there- was conflict between Jains and the adherents of

Scientific activity continued in India, with advancement particularly in
mathematics - including rules for finding permutations and combinations,
the square root of two and the solving of indeterminate equations of second
degree - all features unknown in Europe until the time of Euler, 1,000 years
later. The staple crops were wheat, rice and some millet. Exports were

cotton textiles and spices, while the most sought after import was the horse.
(Continue on page 497)

The Indian Subcontinent: A.D. 801 to 900

THE INDIAN SUBCONTINENT

The Arabs who had invaded Sind in the last century were held at bay by the
Pratiharase. These Sind Arabs now split up into the twin kingdoms of
Multan and Mansura, later to become important trading communities on the
Indus and independent of the Abbasids.

The consolidation of powerful states along the northern marches gave
Indian politics a new character. No one state was strong enough to unite the
north Indian plain, yet each was able to prevent any other from so doing.
Frontier guard against Islam no longer was a problem and the Indian rulers
were free to pursue their own quarrels. Finally the Pratiharas overcame the
Palas and were in control of the Gangetic plain, becoming the greatest
political power in India and great builders in the Gupta tradition. (Ref. 68)
Cities flourished and the revival of Hinduism resulted in more and more
organization around temples, so that everyone tended to cluster within the
temple precincts. Royal courts began to play only a secondary role.
Tantrism had now come to full flower as an atavistic, magical and
libidinous cult absorbed into the Hindu practices, with special influence
from eastern India to Nepal and Tibet. The most influential Hindu religious
philosopher was Shankara (also Sankaracharya), a Brahman from Kerala,
who tried to reduce the multiple concepts of the Upanishands to an
intellectual system. (Ref. 8) Buddhism gradually merged back into the
wider field of Indian religiosity from which it had sprung and it survived as
a distinct doctrine only on the fringes of the Indian world, in Ceylon, Burma
and Tibet. (Ref. 139) Even in Kashmir, Buddhism seemed to give way in
some degree to Hinduism with the construction of the shrine of
Avantisvami, made with steeply pitched, double-pent roofs, because of the
heavy winter snows. The design had a central tower shrine and a smaller
shrine in each comer, the typical Vishnu, Kashmiri temple. King
Avantivarman (855-883) was one of Kashmir's most beloved monarchs,
reigning in an era of peace. (Ref. 275)

The Jains resisted the Tantric movement and retained their identity but with
a very limited membership, chiefly in southern and western India. The

Parsis, followers of Zoraster, came to India about this time as refuges from
the Moslem conquest of Persia and they have survived until today mainly in
the region around modern Bombay. In the Deccan, the Rashtrakutas, who
had overthrown the Chalukyas, built the great temple of Ellora, carved from
solid rock. They were also true patrons of literature. In the south the
Pallavas were superseded by the Cholas, who sculpted hard stone and
modeled bronze. (Ref. 173) Samkara, of Malabar on the southwest coast,
revitalized the Vedanta[footnote] and his doctrine became accepted as
orthodox Brahmanism. He founded four scholastic monasteries.

The Vedanta is a derivative of the Upanishads. (Ref. 119)

(Continue on page 527)

The Indian Subcontinent: A.D. 901 to 1000

THE INDIAN SUBCONTINENT

We noted in the last chapter that Buddhism was being replaced to some
extent in Kashmir by Hinduism, but one particular off-shoot of Hinayana
Buddhism called "Sarvastivadin" tended to persist alongside Siva and
Vishnu. A distinct school of Saivism developed which added deep
philosophical aspects to the Kashmir intellectual tradition. (Ref. 275)

The Pratihara power in the north began to weaken as the result of Turkish
raids and battles with southern dynasties. Beginning about 997 the Turk
Mahmud from Ghazni, Afghanistan, made regular raids into Hindustan. The
Rashtrakutas were the last southern power to ever exercise any pressure
against the north until the 18th century and in this 10th century they were
displaced in the Deccan by a descendant of the old Chalukya kings. In
central India the Chola Kingdom developed between Madura and Madras
and extended westward to Mysore. This began a long career of conquest
which brought them tribute from all southern India and even Ceylon.
Religion and gods and temples had definitely come to the forefront in
Indian culture. The Tantric cult practices were absorbed into general
Hinduism and Buddhism became an empty shell by the end of the century.
(Ref. 119)

Sri Lanka (Ceylon) has strong historical connections with north India from
which both its language and dominant religion, Buddhism, are derived.
Artistically, however, it has been influenced by the eastern Deccan and
southern India. At the end of this 10th century Ceylon was invaded by the
militant Cholas and the locals moved their capital south to Polunnaruwa. At
the peak of its glory the city of Anuradhapura, now buried, had an area
greater than modern day Chicago. The inner city contained only holy
structures, palaces and pleasure domes for royalty. Thousands of monks
took their daily rice from huge stone troughs that still exist. (Ref. 108)
(Continue on page 563)

The Indian Subcontinent: A.D. 1001 to 1100

THE INDIAN SUBCONTINENT

As the Pratihara Dynasty fell in 1019, political power in the north of India
passed to local chieftains, most of whom belonged to Rajput clans and who
were descendants of Ephthalites and other invaders of the past. Then
Mahmud the Turk raided from Afghanistan into western India and became
the richest king in history. Moslem historians have rated him the greatest
monarch of his time, as he ruled the Punjab and the northern Ganges
regions, although keeping his headquarters in Afghanistan. (Ref. 8)

Palas Buddhist kings ruled Bengal and Bagadha but Chola armies from the
south raided as far north on the east coast as the Ganges Delta. These
Cholas, originally from the tip of the peninsula, were an ancient people who
had now conquered most of Tamil, the eastern Deccan, Ceylon and parts of
the Malay peninsula, under their King Rajaraja and his son, Rajendra. Then
they drove north, helping to dismember the Palas domains and threatening
the Bengals’ independence. Ceylon (Sri Lanka) finally expelled the Cholas
in 1070 when the dynasty was ended by an assassination.

It is of some interest that in this century the ancient Ayurvedic (knowledge
of life), a traditional Indian healing method, was translated into Persian and
Arabic and thus eventually spread to medieval Europe. (Ref. 125)
(Continue on page 594)

The Indian Subcontinent: A.D. 1101 to 1200

THE INDIAN SUBCONTINENT

India's "Dark Ages" continued with only one bright spot, the
Rajputana[footnote]. In the small sub-states of historical Mewar (now
Udaipur), Marwar, Amber and adjacent areas a people one-half native and
one-half descended from Scythians and Ephthalites, built a feudal
civilization under the government of war-like rajas. The central feature was
a blood relationship within each clan. All the Rajput courts were centers of
Sanskrit learning and their chronicles included a chivalric code unique in
India. Their sovereignty ended late in the century when a new Turkish
power swept down from Central Asia. This was a remnant of the old
Ghaznavid Empire which had been thrown out of Asia in the last century by
the Seljugs and was now led by Muizzudin Muhammad of the Ghurid
family. Having overthrown their Ghasnavid suzerains, they entered the
Punjab in A.D. 1186 and had defeated the Rajput clans by 1191.
Muhammad (also known as Muhammed Ghauri) set up the Sultanate of
Delhi, which was to rule northern India for three centuries with great
cruelty and fanaticism. Wells (Ref. 229) calls this the Kharismian or Khiva
Empire of Turks. Mohammad appointed Kutb-ud-dun Aibak, a slave from
Turkistan, to be viceroy of his Indian conquests and left him full discretion
in its management. About 1200 these Turkish Moslems swept into Bengal
(now Bangladesh) and were eagerly greeted by the people who were
seeking a release from Hindu oppression. (Ref. 8, 229, 119, 37) (Continue
on page 643)

Rajputana is the historical state roughly corresponding to modern Rajasthan

The Indian Subcontinent: A.D. 1201 to 1300

THE INDIAN SUBCONTINENT

We noted in the last chapter that after 1186 the Moslem Turk, Muizzudin
Muhammad, led his forces down from Afghanistan to set up the Sultanate
of Delhi. The first 13th century ruler (A.D. 1206) of this new dynasty was
Qutbuddin Aibak, a general of Muhammad's, who established a capital at
Delhi. By 1235 this sultanate had extended from the Sind to Bengal and
continued to gradually expand. (Ref. 8) The general policy of those Turkish
sultans of India are indicated by Ala-ud-din 's instructions to his advisors
near the end of the century to the effect that they should draw up rules and
regulations for grinding down the Hindus and depriving them of wealth and
prosperity. Although politically succumbing to these invaders, 4/5 of the
people of India remained Hindus although impoverished. Lacking power to
resist they took refuge in supernatural consolations.

Hinduism argued that both mastery and slavery were superficial delusions
and concluded that freedom of body or nation was hardly worth defining in
so brief a life. That was and is the secret of India. (Ref. 46) Metallic guns
with powder, but not cannon, were in use in India by 1275. (Ref. 213)
(Continue on page 684)

The Indian Subcontinent: A.D. 1301 to 1400

THE INDIAN SUBCONTINENT

The Delhi (Turkish) Sultanate expanded under a new Turkish group, the
Khalis, and they were alert enough to admit local Indian Muslims to high
office, thus relieving much of the internal tension. Under Muhammad bin
Tughlug (1325-51) the sultanate reached its maximum with 23 kingdoms,
including all of the southern ones - an area larger than any Indian
conglomerate since Asoka. (Ref. 8) He attempted close control over the
economy, fixing prices, replacing gold and silver money with copper and
brass tokens and regulated imports and exports. (Ref. 68) High taxes, an
abortive attempt to move Delhi, with all its people, to the south and the
sheer size of the empire led to its decline. Various states broke away and by
the time of the invasion by Timur in 1398 Tughlug barely controlled the
area beyond Delhi, itself. (Ref. 8) Timur sacked Delhi, however, slaying
100,000 prisoners in cold blood after defeating Tughlug's Moslem forces.

The religious and philosophical Hindu activity in Kashmir ceased when the
Moslem invaders took over the valley and today Kashmiris are nearly all
followers of Islam. (Ref. 275)

In southern India the state of Vijayanager began to rise as a power and soon
comprised all the present native states of the lower peninsula, along with
Mysoa and Madras. It was primarily a military realm which fought
constantly with the northern sultanate, using cannons and cavalry. It did not
fall to the Moslems until late in the next century.

The Indian Subcontinent: A.D. 1401 to 1500

THE INDIAN SUBCONTINENT

As many Hindus began to accept the Moslem faith, both religions had
adaptations to make. The caste system was not compatible with Islam, but
the Sufi ideas could be adapted to Indian mysticism. Ramananda and Kabir
were reformers who spoke against the caste system, reincarnation, etc.
Kabir claimed all Hindus and Moslems really worshiped the same God and
should be one religious community. The Sikhs trace their origin to Kabir,
although their distinct religious organization did not appear as such until
later, under Nanak, in 1538. The Kingdom of Delhi, although reduced in
size, kept a tenuous hold over the Punjab. The Sayyid rulers laid claim to
Arab descent from the Prophet. Later, in 1451, the Afghan, Buhlul Lodi,
founded the Lodi dynasty in that area.

Unfortunately, one early century Kashmir ruler, Sikander, became so
inflamed with Islam that he leveled most of the earlier Buddhist and Hindu
structures, leaving piles of stone scattered across the valley where these
beautiful temples had previously stood. (Ref. 275)

The Vijayanagar Empire was the dominant power in south India, shielding
the southern people from the Moslem kingdoms of the north. The capital
city, by the same name, was some 60 miles in circumference, flourishing as
a trade, Brahman studies, and Dravidian art center. Their kings had great
wealth and power, and during the reign of Krishnadeva Raya the empire had
dealings with many Asian and European countries. In a great battle of
Talikota in 1565, however, Moslem forces completely demolished the
capital city and, in essence, destroyed the empire. By 1500 most of India
had submitted to Moslem rule.

Incidentally, syphilis had reached India by 1498. (Ref. 213, 38)

Ceylon was involved in active spice trade with China and the Arabs in this
15th century. The Portuguese had conquered some coastal areas and
implanted the Catholic religion. (Ref. 46, 38) (Continue on page 811)

The Indian Subcontinent: A.D. 1501 to 1600

THE INDIAN SUBCONTINENT (See Map in section on
INDIA, 18th century)

Two separate powers continued to exist in India. In the north Babur, a
Turkish chieftain, 5th in line from Timur, entered India in 1523 from
Afghanistan with artillery and only the Rajputs organized to resist. After the
battle of Panipat in 1526 he became the Mogul ruler who made Delhi equal
to a Medicean Rome. Agricultural activity increased greatly with land-
clearing, irrigation projects and new industrial crops such as indigo, sugar
cane, cotton and mulberry trees for silk-worms. Silver coins appeared in
this century as rupees, although affecting only the upper level of economic
life. Actually India was one of the countries that in effect helped to hoard
the silver from American mines. It was this American silver which fed the
countless mintings and reminting of coins. (Ref. 292) The less fortunate
used copper coins and bitter almonds as money. The gold coins used in the
reign of Akbar were seldom seen. Even more than in Europe, fairs were a
part of every day life, almost always combined with the endless
pilgrimages. Barter was often more common than the use of money, except
in the large fairs on the Ganges. Each religion had its own fairs; the Hindus
at Hardwar and Benares; the Sikhs at Amritsar; the Muslims at Pakpattan.
(Ref. 260, 292)

After Babur's death, the Afghans were expelled from India by Sher Shah
and it took a new full scale invasion by Babur's grandson Akbar to restore
the Mogul rule over all Hindustan except for Mewar. The Mogul emperors
regularly had relays of horsemen from the Hindu Kush bring their fruit-
flavored sherbets or water ices to Delhi. Persian horses were brought in by
fleets and sometimes sold for 20 times the value of a slave. With no barley
or hay, the horses were fed on a type of large pea, crushed and then soaked.
(Ref. 260) Akbar was the greatest and most beneficial of all the Mogul
rulers and overall they were the best of the foreign dynasties that had ruled
India. Akbar used the Persian language in his court and had Hindu literature
translated into that tongue. He encouraged all religions - Moslem, Brahman,
Buddhist, Christian, Zorastrian and Jains and finally tried to promulgate a
new one, including some of the features of all and called this Din lahi. It did

not succeed and throughout the Mogul period it was basically the Moslem
faith that was in competition with Hinduism and the greatest barrier to
Hindu-Moslem understanding was not metaphysical, but social. The five
original castes of the Hindus had subdivided through the centuries into
almost 5,000 sub-castes, a system that the original Aryan founders had
developed to perpetuate the enslavement of the original dark-skinned
Dravidian peoples, who became the "Untouchables". Islam 's mosques drew
millions of converts, and the vast majority were those Untouchables seeking
release from the hopelessness of their place in the Hindu hierarchy.

The Moslem upper classes -many of them descendants of the Mogul
(Turkish) invaders, tended to be landlords and soldiers, but the Moslem
masses usually continued to be landless peasants in the service of others.
There were no "great families" in Delhi. The Great Mogul appointed lords
for life, only, but did not continue such grants for their children. Thus there
was no feudalism and perhaps accordingly no precursor for capitalism.
(Ref. 292) Muslim food became popular, particularly the addiction to
sweets. Our word "candy" is derived from an Arabic word for "sugar". (Ref.
37, 211) Great famines occurred in 1555 and 1596 in northwest India and
there were even reports of cannibalism. (Ref. 260)

Sikhism was developed at the warring frontier of the Punjab from the
impact of monotheistic Islam on polytheistic Hinduism. It was founded by
an Hindu guru trying to reconcile the two faiths, using ideas favored by the
Moguls. Hounded by the Mogul cruelty, however, Nanak, the 10th guru of
Sikhism, converted the new religion into a fighting faith and from that time
on every Sikh's name ended with Singh, meaning "lion" and every one had
to follow the law of the five K's: (1) Kesh - let beards grow. (2) Khangha -
keep a steel comb in uncut hair. (3) Kucha - wear shorts for warrior's
mobility. (4) Kara - wear steel bangle on right wrist. (5) Kirpan - go with a
sword.

All were advised to ref rain from smoking, drinking alcohol, uniting with
Moslem women and eating meat which had been slaughtered by Moslems,
i.e. by cutting throats. Their most sacred site was the Golden Temple which
sheltered their Holy Book, the Granth Sahib, at their capital at Amritsar.
(Ref. 37)

In the south, the Empire Vijayanger, with the capital city of the same name,
remained prosperous under a great King Krishna deva Raya. The city
occupied an area of 60 square miles in circumference. Contrary to the
situation in the north, gold coins were the major currency in the Deccan and
at lower levels silver and copper were used along with sea shell money.
India had no gold of its own, however, and the money came from the West
for Indian merchandise. A great textile business had developed in Guijerat
and there was an enormous burst of industrialism there in this 16th century.
(Ref. 260) Buddhism had lost its hold in the south and a form of
Brahmanism that honored Vishnu had become the faith of the people and
the cow became holy. In 1565 the Vijayanager Empire fell in a day in the
battle of Talikota to a coalition of Moslems, chiefly from Iran and
Turkistan.

Despite the political eclipse of Hinduism by the Moslem conquerors, the
overwhelming majority of the natives remained faithful to their ancient
religion and considered Moslems as simply another caste. Hindu high
culture, however, was impoverished and construction of Hindu temples
came to a halt. The use of vernacular tongues for Hindu literature was
promoted by the poet Sur Das and a new religious fervor was developed in
Bengal as the holy man, Chaitanya, began to be considered God incarnate, a
reincarnation of Vishnu. (Ref. 139)

It should be noted that in the interior of India, where water transportation
was not available, imperial consolidation was most difficult because of the
problem of obtaining cannon at battle sites. Babur attempted to cast cannon
on the spot and at the end of the century Akbar hauled some overland and -
thus both obtained large areas of domination. (Ref. 279)

The Portuguese began their conquests in India with a sea battle off the port
of Diu in 1509 and the superiority of their long range weapons, accurate up
to 200 yards, pre- vented the Moslem fleet's "board and fight" technique
and led to easy victory. By 1537 the Portuguese had established trading
posts on the Hooghly River, off the Bay of Bengal. The Hooghly is a
secondary branch of the Ganges, going to the sea, although it is still
"Mother Ganges" to the Hindus. The larger Ganges branch, the Padma, goes
eastward into west Bengal. (Ref. 172) The East India Trading Company, as

we noted previously, was founded in London September 24, 1599 with an
initial capital of 72,000 British pounds and 125 shareholders. It was formed
to compete against Dutch privateers who controlled the spice trade. Eight
months later, in August of 1600, the 500 ton galleon Hector dropped anchor
just north of Bombay and its Captain William Hawkins set off to explore
the interior where he finally met Emperor Jehangir, the world's richest
monarch and the fourth of the great Moguls. (Ref. 37)

Sri Lanka did not escape the Portuguese, who landed in 1505 and who soon
controlled most of the island and its spice trade, giving it the name
"Ceilao". Only the mountain kingdom of Kandy escaped them. (Ref. 175,
108) (Continue on page 902)

The Indian Subcontinent: A.D. 1601 to 1700

THE INDIAN SUBCONTINENT (See map, this section in next
chapter)

Back to The Indian Subcontinent : A.D. 1501 to 1600

The sons of Akbar inherited his empire but not all of his qualities.
Jehangir| footnote], who ruled first, was an able degenerate of great cruelty
with a harem of 6,000 women. His brother Jehan followed with a return to
the Moslem faith and persecution of all others. His fame is in the Taj-
Mahal, built in memory of his wife, Mumtaz. Actually India was then at a
zenith of prosperity and prestige, in spite of one of the worst famines in
history occurring in 1630-31, with hundreds of thousands dying and the
countryside stinking with abandoned corpses. Human flesh was sold in
open market. (Ref. 260) Copper began to run out, in spite of some imports
from China and Japan, so that copper coinage began to slow down and
silver came to the fore. Cowries were also again brought into common use
to replace copper paysahs. (Ref. 260)

The name means "Conqueror of the World". (Ref. 222), page 211

In the far north in the Pun jab the Sikhs had sought to reconcile the Moslem
and Hindu faiths in a higher revelation, and their canon of religious writings
was Officially closed in 1604. Soon thereafter the Sikh leaders fell afoul of
the Mogul authorities and the community took to arms, battling the Moguls
throughout the remainder of the century. In 1699 the Guru Gobind Singh
made the Granth, scriptures from writings of Hindu, Moslem and Sikh holy
men, the official symbolic guru of Sikhism. (Ref. 25)

To regress for a moment, early in the century the Turkish Moguls extended
their empire throughout southwestern India, including Sind, Rajputana and
Gujerat, so that only the southeastern part of the peninsula remained
independent as the Deccan Sultanate. Even this fell almost entirely to the
Moguls as the century progressed. But these southern con- quests brought
them into confrontation with a new Hindu power, the Marathas, who had
established an independent kingdom on the Kondan coast beginning in
1627 under Sivaji (also Shivaji) the greatest Hindu warrior hero. (Ref. 8,

37) Sivaji opened a guerilla campaign against the Emperor Aurangzeb
(1658-1707), Jehan's son, a pious Moslem, who despite his despotism,
subtle diplomacy and peculiar morals was the least cruel of the
Moguls| footnote].

When Jehan had fallen ill, Aurangzeb had killed his 3 older brothers,
imprisoned his sick father and seized the throne. (Ref. 38)

He warred against the Hindu religion and art and although worshipped as a
saint by the Moslems, his religious zeal wrecked his dynasty and his
country. Famine killed 3 million in Bengal in 1669, although in other years
it was the one area of India which could export rice. (Ref. 222, 260) As in
China and black Africa, human labor was widely used. When Aurangzeb
made a journey to Kashmir, his loaded camels were relieved on the first
slopes of the Himalayas by 15,000 to 20,000 porters. Royal orders were
carried, as in Persia, by running men, relieved about every 6 miles, the
teams covering a total of 30 to 60 miles a day. It is interesting that several
hundred thousand people followed Aurangzeb to Kashmir, as Delhi was
almost "shut-down" in the absence of the Great Mogul and his court. (Ref.
260)

Although it is well known that cattle are considered sacred and left running
free in much of India, in the 17th century many were harnessed to plows
and carriages and even ridden by soldiers and nobles. The Mouris caste
sometimes had enormous convoys of up to 10,000 animals transporting
grain and rice. India had many highly skilled workers, particularly in the
textile industries, even though they did not develop the high quality tools
that were used in Europe. (Ref. 260, 292)

By 1700, as the Mogul administration was in decay, the Marathas were
ravaging the Deccan and eastern provinces and previous Mogul allies such
as Rajputs, Sikhs, Jats and Satnamis were all revolting. In the meantime
Portuguese influence on the coast shrank both in territory and cornmercial
profit, but Dutch, English, French and Danish companies were all eager to
set up coastal trading centers to export textiles, sugar, indigo and salt petre.
(Ref. 8) Near Portuguese Goa, because of a shortage of wood, houses were
small and made of straw and most had no fireplace or windows. The
furniture consisted of a few rush mats. (Ref. 260) Nevertheless, every urban

center in India had its money-changing bankers - the sarafs, who mostly
belonged to the powerful trading caste of the Banyans. Although there were
no large stock exchanges as in Europe, still there were bills of exchange,
currency exchange, credit and maritime insuranCe and the Banyans acted as
brokers and middle men for all the European activities. Not surprisingly the
Fuggers and the Welsers of Augsburg were also well represented in India,
with their joint representative, Ferdinand Cron, operating out of Cochin and
then Goa. He amassed a personal fortune by 1619 working with Spanish
and Portuguese, although the latter finally imprisoned him. (Ref. 292)

The French East India company, founded in 1664, never did well, perhaps
because of a lack of means and the general immaturity of French capitalism.
Surat, on the Gulf of Cambay, progressively became more and more of a
boom city as the century progressed. First the English had a trading post
there in 1609, then the Dutch in 1616 and the French in 1665, with lavish
equipment. In 1652 Surat was already as large as Lyons, with a population
perhaps approaching a million, acting as the gateway to the Mogul Empire.
The Banyans were the most important group of intermediaries. (Ref. 292)
Calcutta was founded by the British East India Company on the Hooghly
River in 1690 by absorbing three villages, one of which was called
Kalikata, honoring the goddess Kali, which may have given Calcutta its
name. (Ref. 172)

Heirs of Sivaji, the peshwas, were a tight clique of Chitpawan (purified by
fire) Brahmans, who continued to resist British rule in the south. (Ref. 37)
The poet, Tulsi Das, translated material into Hindu from the Ramayana,
elaborating on the divine incarnation, Rama. This was widely popular and
of enormous importance for later moral and religious education. This
popular movement, along with that of Chaitanya and Sin Das, helped
protect Hinduism from the charms of Islam. (Ref. 139)

The Dutch arrived on Sri Lanka in 1658, changing the name again to
"Ceilon". Life was hard there and it has been reported that rice cooked in
water with a little salt, some green leaves and lemon juice passed for a good
meal. There were no markets on the island but there were shops. (Ref. 260,
292)

Forward to The Indian Subcontinent: A.D. 1701 to 1800

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The Indian Subcontinent: A.D. 1701 to 1800

THE INDIAN SUBCONTINENT

Shortly after Aurangzeb's death in 1707, many of the provinces became
essentially independent. The Peshwas, officially the chief ministers of
Sivaji's house, presided over a confederacy of Maratha chiefs representing
the Sindhias, Gaikwars, Holkars and Bhonslas. (Ref. 8) In addition, as the
Mogul Empire went into decay, it was subject to many raids from the
outside. Nadir Shah, the Turcoman ruler of Afghanistan and part of Persia
raided to Delhi, where he almost destroyed the city. At about the same time
the British, French, Portuguese, and French moved in from the coasts. This
is not to imply that the Europeans immediately conquered all. In 1722
combined English and Portuguese forces suffered an humiliating defeat at
the hands of Kanoji Angria and in 1739 the Dutch were routed when they
tried to land in the Kingdom of Travancore. Yet, after 1730 the trading
balance began to shift as European shipping greatly increased, with more
cargoes of goods and silver. The Westerners established their own trading
networks, which in turn hastened the end of the great Mogul's Empire. (Ref.
292) India and the Far East, whose industries were as advanced as Europe's,
only wanted silver - not goods - in exchange for their tea, cotton, and silk.
England alone spent 30,000,000 pounds in silver between 1733 and 1766 to
cover her purchases in India and the East. (Ref. 8) In the early years much
of that involved the printed "calico" cotton fabrics, but after the Industrial
Revolution the English made those themselves and ruined the Indian
weavers. (Ref. 260) The same occurred with France, where authorities for a
long time tried desperately to protect their local manufacturers from the
invasion of those light fabrics from India, even levying fines and harsh
punishments to those who bought or sold them. After 1759 such bans were
lifted as the French established their own cotton industries.

We dealt with the money-changing bankers of India, the Sarafs, in the last
chapter. Belonging chiefly to the powerful trading caste of the Banyans,
these men organized an extensive commercial organization. A trader could
borrow money in one city, pay back in another where he transferred the debt
to a third place by borrowing again and so on. Exchange fees resembled
interest, sometimes at a staggering rate, but they allowed merchants to

operate as far away as Java or southern China. The Banyan bankers
themselves were present in large numbers in Isfahan, Istanbul and Moscow.
At home one of the commercial and shipping centers was Surat. Sometimes
one merchant alone would send out 20 ships a year, each from 300 to 800
tons and carrying up to 25,000 pounds of his own merchandise. (Ref. 292)

Map taken from Reference y/.

With the collapse of the Moguls, the Sikhs had a chance to make a kingdom
of their own in the Punjab, but as warriors they lost some of their religious
and philosophical goals. According to Moslem accounts, the Sikh rule was
one which defiled mosques, outraged women, defiled tombs, and butchered
Moslems of either sex by various horrible means. (Ref. 37) They were kept
somewhat in check, however, by the invading Afghans from the north, who
were led by Ahmed Shah Durani (1747-1793), who developed a short-lived
empire from the Aral Sea to well into India. The hopes of the Marathas to
succeed the Moguls were dashed at the Third Battle of Panipat in 1761
when the Afghan Ahmad Shah Abdali decisively defeated the Peshwas'
forces. This permanently weakened the Hindu armies and left India far
more vulnerable than before to later English encroachment. (Ref. 139, 8)

In the Deccan the Nizam of Hyderbad was a Muslim viceroy established in
the 1720s, independent of Delhi. It was a dynasty which remained the most
important Muslim ruling house in India up to 1948. (Ref. 68) Bengal was
the third great province to become independent and in 1756 the Bengalese
even temporarily drove out the British. A side light of that conflict was the
infamous "Black Hole of Calcutta" incident. As the Nabob of Bengal
sacked Calcutta, 146 Englishmen were forced into a guard room measuring
18' by 14'10", with only two small windows for ventilation. On the
following morning only 23 men were still alive. (Ref. 222) The East India
Trading Company inevitably became embroiled in local politics and
squabbles and felt that they should intervene. On June 23, 1757 Robert
Clive, leading about 900 Englishmen and 2,000 Indian sepoys (native
infantrymen), trained and equipped according to European methods and
with 10 f ield guns, routed a Nabob's army of some 50,000 outside a
Bengali village of Plassey and opened the gates of north India to the British.
(Ref. 37)

Incident to the War of the Austrian Succession in Europe, French and
English trading companies were in armed conf lict on the eastern coast of
India. Actually the European contingents of each were very small, but they
dominated the battlefields containing hordes of local mercenaries because
of their superior weaponry and obedience on the field. When the treaty of
1763 was signed, France was run out of India. Thereafter, in addition to
Bengal, most of the eastern coast (northern Sarkars) was secured from the
Nizam by 1768.

By the year 1700 there were about 1,500 Englishmen in India, but by the
end of the 18th century the British Indian Empire had increased to
thousands of British officials and soldiers under a British governor-general.
The English in India tended to excessive drinking and eating. In 1756 one
contingent of 848 men lost 87 from liver damage from alcoholism. (Ref.
211) On the other side of the coin, 10,000,000 Indians died in 1768 in the
great famine of Bengal, the worst in the world's history.

After Clive, the East India Company was run by Warren Hastings and the
Company taxed the land for 50% of the produce and made additional
special levies. Enormous British fortunes were made, while, according to
some writers at least, 30,000,000 humans were reduced to the extremity of
wretchedness in a terrible tyranny. (Ref. 46) Winston Churchill (Ref. 31), of
course, has a different version, stating that since Hastings got no financial
help from England he had to raise money from the wealthy Bengali to
rescue Bombay and the Carnatic (southern tip of India on the east) and to
stop the bloodshed which was once more engulfing Bengal from the
Mahrattas. He says that Hasting left India in 1785 "-not without the
gratitude of the inhabitants." Hastings had initiated some reforms, including
a simplification of Indian coinage and government control of salt and opium
production. (Ref. 222) He was finally charged with misconduct and brought
home to stand a seven year trial in England in which he was acquitted of all
charges.

Other developments on the Indian subcontinent in this century include the
invasion of Nepal by Chinese armies marching from Tibet in 1792, at which
time the Gurkha tribesmen were forced to recognize Chinese suzerainty.
The British took over most of Ceylon in 1795 and 1796 and began the

importation of great numbers of Tamil laborers, the results of which are still
upsetting Sinhalese politics. Coffee rust appeared first in Ceylon and soon
spread throughout Southeast Asia, forcing a change of crop to tea and
rubber. (Ref. 175, 108, 211) (Continue on page 1110)

The Indian Subcontinent: A.D. 1801 to 1900

THE INDIAN SUBCONTINENT

India's history shows a tendency of any strong government, particularly
those in the Gengetic plain, to expand and the British Bengal government-
of about 1800 followed this pattern under Governor Lord Richard Colley
Wellesley[footnote]. Some territories were annexed outright; others were
brought under control through a system of subsidiary alliances. The
Marathas were finally crushed by the British in 1818 and all prospects of a
powerful Hindu state and culture disappeared. Until 1835 the British
continued to use the Mogul language of administration (that is, Persian) and
in that way the Mogul Empire survived, at least in name, until 1858.
Brother of the Duke of Wellington, who was Arthur Wellesley

The use of legislation to institute social change began during the governor-
generalship of Lord William Bentinck (1828-1835). Laws included the
forbidding of suttee, as well as female infanticide, slavery and human
sacrifice. Other changes included support of higher education institutions
that used the English language. This was seen as a means of introducing a
true understanding of the world and it was endorsed by such Indians as Ram
Mohan Roy, also called Rammohun. He was a most distinguished Indian
radical, at- tempting reform in Hindu customs and religion. In a sense he
was an isolated forerunner of the anglicized upper class Indian, who
subsequently became so important in Indian history. His influence helped to
stimulate reform of Hindu laws and institutions. (Ref. 68, 139, 37)

Some regions of India deserve special attention. The Punjab in northwest
India was

1/2 the size of France and was called the "Country of five rivers". It had
been ruled through the centuries by Persians, Macedonians, Mauryas,
Scythians, Parthians, Huns and then the caliphs of Islam. The indigent
people were the Sikhs, who recaptured the area from the Moguls. It was the
granary of India, a feat made possible by an immense network of irrigation
canals, which were early built by the British. In this century there were
some 15,000,000 Hindus, 16,000 Moslems, and 5,000,000 Sikhs, living in

about 18,000 towns. The language was Urdu. Before collapsing in 1849 the
Sikhs gave the British red-coats their worst defeat on the Indian
subcontinent at Chilleanwala.

In contrast to the figures just given, the State of Bengal at the mouth of the
Ganges, contained 35,000,000 Moslems and 30,000,000 Hindus, overall
more people than in Great Britain, including Ireland. In spite of the
religious divisions, all Bengali spoke the same language and came from the
same racial stock, dating back to the pre-Christian era. The Moslems
seemed to migrate to the east while the Hindus congregated in the west. The
east grew almost no food at all, just jute, while the west grew enough rice
for both.

To escape the dust and heat of the Indian summer, the ruling British
established a summer retreat at the base of the Himalyas at Simla, a
miniature Sussex hamlet, characterizing the complete separation of the
ruling British from their subjects. Only three carriages were allowed in the
entire community and the standard conveyance was a rickshaw requiring
four coolies, almost all of which had tuberculosis. Indians were not even
allowed to walk on the mall. (Ref. 37) Through various pressures, political
unification was pretty well obtained and a modern state created by about
1855. The first steam vessel had arrived in 1826. By 1855 there were 2,500
miles of telegraph lines. Some generalizations of the impact of western rule
are that trade and commerce responded to new conditions better than
industry and that the creation of a market economy was important in
political unification. Industry tended to remain in small enclaves entirely
under western control, but through the century India had a favorable
balance of payments because of the sale of jute, hides, oilseeds and wheat.

The British had a professional army of never more than 200,000 men and
2/3 of them were native Indians. Native revolts against the spreading East
Indian Company, particularly the Sepoy mutiny of 1857, forced the British
government to take over actual control of the country. This famous Sepoy
revolt had to do with the new Enfield rifle which was issued along with
cartridges, which were coated with grease. The cartridge had to be bitten
open before loading and the Indian Sepoys (many of high Brahmin Hindu
caste) thought that biting fat of the sacred cow would throw them back

down through many life times of struggle to get back up to their present
level in the cycle of rebirth, while the Muslims in the units felt that if the fat
were of the unclean pig, the situation was intolerable. The mutiny of the
troops started at Meerut in the far north of Rajputana and resulted in 14
months of bitter fighting. Sikh loyalty to the British in the Punjab and
indifference in the Deccan and south, turned the tide eventually in favour of
the British. The most important consequence of all this was an abrupt
change in the British management of India.

The East India Company was terminated by royal decree on August 12,
1858 and the British crown (Queen Victoria) took over. Ultimate~y 2,000
members of the Indian Civil Service and 10,000 British officers had
authority over the 300,000,000 Indian people, helped only by 60,000 British
regular soldiers and 200,000 native troops. The English, after fighting 111
wars in India, using Indian money and troops, completed the conquest of
that land and then, with peace obtained, did establish railways, factories and
schools as a token reward for their financial despotism.

There has been much criticism of British imperialism in India, but some of
it has certainly been unjust. Although the British East India Company may
have taken much wealth from India, there was plenty left for the 565
princes or maharajas of the same number of states which remained more or
less self-governing under British jurisdiction. Those princes had an average
of 5, 8 wives, 12 to 16 children, 9.2 elephants, 2.8 private railway cars, 3.4
Rolls-Royces and 22.9 tigers killed. Most had tremendous wealth in gold,
silver and fabulous jewels, even if their subjects might be starving. The
Sikh Maharaja of Pateala had a pearl necklace later insured by Lloyds of
London for $1,000,000, but his most intriguing item was a diamond
breastplate composed of 1,000 brilliantly matched blue-white diamonds.
The Maharaja of Baroda went about on an elephant with all the animal's
equipment, such as the howdah, harness and great saddle cloth, made of
gold, with 10 gold chains hung from each huge ear, each chain worth
$60,000. (Ref. 211, 122, 8, 37)

Throughout the century the Indian army fought almost incessantly along the
passes and peaks of the frontier with Afghanistan, at Landi Kotal and up
and down the Kyber.

The enemy was cruel, Pathans like the Wazirs and Mahsuds, who finished
off wounded prisoners with knives. Famine occurred through most of India
in 1866 and again in 1877 and then periodically until 1899, although
commercial agriculture flourished. When another episode of plague arrived
in Bombay in 1898, within 10 years some 6,000,000 persons had died of

it[ footnote]. The first all Indian political organization was founded in 1885
as the Indian National Congress and it soon developed an extremist wing,
which began to question the aliens' right to rule India. This organization
dominated Indian political and social thinking in the next century. Mahatma
Gandhi was born in 1869. The Lancashire cotton famine in Britain,
generated by the American Civil War, led to a cotton boom in the Deccan
and thus to the development of regional crop patterns in India. Nepal got
potatoes from America and this soon became the staple food of the Sherpas.
(Ref. 37, 8, 68, 211)

Calcutta had suffered a cholera epidemic in 1817 and the disease spread
overland with British troops to the northern borders, Afghanistan and
Nepal. Previously this disease had been confined to Hindu pilgrimages
along the Ganges. (Ref. 140)

Map taken from Reference 97

At the end of the century India was the second largest nation on earth with
about five times as many Hindus as Moslems, several million Sikhs and
about the same number of Christians, a few Parsis and still fewer Jews. The
observation of the occasional contrast between Christian principles and the
actual practice of Christians, left India skeptical and satirical and
Christianity has converted only 6% of the Indian people in 300 years, as the
Hindu religion has remained supreme. There were 15 official languages and
845 dialects. There was a leper population the size of Switzerland and
enough beggars to populate Holland. Cholera was endemic but became
general and violent throughout this century and even spread to Europe. A
virulent form of tuberculosis had developed in the previous century and
continued to ravage in this one. (Ref. 260) There were still some many
million aborigines, some like the Nagas of the far east Nagaland next to
Burma, who still hunted heads until the middle of the 20th century. In the
19th century probably as many as 3,000,000 Indians migrated to other
countries along the shores of the Indian Ocean, but they did not fuse well

with local peoples and in the next century many had returned home. (Ref.

After the 1830s there was a large migration of Indian Tamils to Sri Lanka to
labor on the coffee, tea and rubber plantations. They joined other Tamils
whose Dravidian ancestors had arrived centuries before from the south of
India. Most practiced Hinduism, in contrast to the majority Sinhalese of the
island, who were Buddhists. The Tamils prospered under the British rule
during the 19th century, but today, in the late 20th century, many are being
deported back to India. (Ref. 108, 260)

Geographical Presentation of The Far East
Back to Introduction to the Method of Geographical Presentation

In general this region concerns most of the Pacific coast nations of Asia.
The northern people of this area tend to be taller and heavier than the
southerners. Language shows greater diversification, even within the
confines of China proper, with the northerners speaking Mandarin (now the
official language for all Chinese), while the southern Chinese primarily
speak one of several mutually unintelligible dialects, including Cantonese,
Wu and Fukien. Chinese, Thai and Vietnamese make up a language family
which in turn is a branch of a language stock called “Sino-Tibetan". The
"Tibeto-Burman" family is another division of this stock. In contrast, the
Mongolians and Manchurians to the north belong to an entirely different
"Altaic" language stock which includes Turkic, Mongolian and Tungusic
(Manchu) language families.

In the text this sixth geographical area will be discussed under four main
subdivisions.

CHINA AND MANCHURIA

This will not include China’s more recent central Asiatic acquisitions,
namely Sinkiang and Tibet, but will include Manchuria and classical China,
which is about one-half the size of the continental United States and
extends from the great Wall in the north, the inner Asian wastelands, and
Tibetan highlands in the west, down to the Pacific on the east and south. It
is divided transversely by the Qin Ling mountain chain into the northern
Yellow river basic, the site of the earliest Chinese civilization, and the more
southern Yangste, sub-tropical basin. (Ref. 73, 101).

JAPAN

The land mass of all the Japanese islands together is smaller than the state
of California. The question of the origin of the Japanese people and
language will be developed in the text.

KOREA

The Mongoloid Korean people speak a language of northern derivation —
Altaic rather than “Sino-Tibetan”, indicating their genetic relation to
Manchuria, even though their culture has been and is very similar to that of
the Chinese.

SOUTHEWEST ASIA

In certain time-frames in the manuscript this region will be further divided
into [1] Mainland Southeast Asia and [2] Indonesia and adjacent islands.
The latter classification will include the Philippines. The boundaries and
peoples of mainland Southeast Asia are and have always been confusing.
On the map, the current situation is indicated. Burma is shown with oblique
lines while Vietnam has horizontal stripes. Cambodia is cross-hatched,
while Laos is essentially black. Other countries are quite well labeled. The
area listed as Siam is, of course, currently called Thailand.

Russia
Kazakhstan X07 , : i ae
py a! Mongolia oe _f ‘

hans Kyrgyzstan

“Tajikistan
| Pakistan , China
~Dlepal- = “Bhutan - 7

Bangladesh”
India

rp, Philippines

The Far East (This map was obtained from
http://english. freemap.jp/index.html and is
used with permission under a Creative
Commons Attribution 3.0 license.)

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The Far East: Beginning to 8000 B.C.

THE FAR EAST

The famous "Peking Man", unearthed in northern China, lived some
500,000 years ago and his use of fire allowed him to live north of the frost
line. He appeared to have a brain capable of speech, an erect posture and
was a hunter and nut-gatherer. He was an intermediary stage of early man,
evolved beyond Homo habilis who had spread across Eurasia and Africa,
and was definitely related to the Java man (Pithecanthropus robustus). Both
have shovel-shaped incisors, a characteristic of the modern Mongoloid race.
After this early interglacial period, north China had a series of evolutionary
changes with Neanderthal-like types and the fully matured Mongoloid
Homo sapiens appearing perhaps 20,000 years ago. In the latter part of this
period, parts of south China were occupied by pro-humans with some
Negroid racial characteristics. All East Asian stone age people used a
distinctive chop- ping tool that differed from the technology of prehistoric
Europe and Africa. Does this mean a multiple origin of present day
mankind?

About 12,000 years ago China progressed to ceramics and the beginnings of
agriculture. This Yang-shao Culture is represented in more than 1,000
excavated sites in Honan and Kansu provinces, with hand-molded red,
black and gray pottery painted with pigments. A hunting culture existed in
central China at that time.

At 20,000 B.C. there were land bridges from China to Korea and from
Korea to the southern tip of Japan and people could go freely across these
areas. The first people to arrive in Japan, however, did so some 100,000
years ago and were pre-Mongolian Asiatics, similar to the aborigines of
Australia today. They were wandering hunters with pale complexions and
heavy beards of varying colors and degrees of curliness. For the next
90,000 years, during the last of the Ice Ages, Japan was usually linked to
the Asiatic mainland by the land bridges and island chains, so that
Hokkaido was accessible to Siberia and Kyushu was accessible to Taiwan
and Southeast Asia. With the melting of the glaciers some 10,000 years ago,
Japan was cut off from the mainland and there were two surviving cultures,

each with its own language - a Siberian one in the north, surviving today as
Ainu, a distant relative of some tongue of the Siberian tundra, and the
southern language, which has developed into modern Japanese. In the latter,
some of the more ancient and basic words such as those for "mother",
"father", etc., bear some slight resemblance to some Polynesian dialects and
to some words of certain hill tribes of Malaya.

Pottery found in Fukin Cave, Kyushu, Japan has a radio-carbon dating of
about 129700 B.C. and is considered to be the earliest in the world. The
Jomon Period of Japan, with a hunting, fishing and gathering economy and
the use of pottery but not metal, started about 12,000 B.C. and continued for
the next 8,000 years. In this era Japan seems to have been isolated from
China and had more in common with the Pacific Islands.

Java man, whose remains were found in the Brantas Valley of Java by
Eugene Dubois, a Dutch doctor, in 1891, has been dated to 400, 000 B.C.,
and appears to be related to Peking man in China and has the same
Mongoloid, shovel-shaped incisor teeth. Some 20,000 years ago there were
land bridges all about the Malayan peninsula, through Sumatra, Java and
Borneo and connecting all to the regions of present Cambodia and Vietnam,
making the huge subcontinent called the Sunda Shelf. The people may have
been the ancestors of present-day Negritos still occupying some remote
regions of this area. Most were hunters, some lived in caves, and there were
cultivated foods in Thailand as early as 10,000 B.C. There have been
carbon datings of 9,750 B.C. of seeds of peas, beans, cucumbers and water
chestnuts of the size and shape suggesting actual cultivation. If true, this
was some 2,000 years before true agriculture can be proved in the Near East
or Central America. About 250,000 years ago people may have walked
across the then existing land bridge from the Malaysian peninsula and the
Asian mainland to the Philippine Islands. The men there may have been
akin to the Java and Peking men. Cave finds west of Mindanao show crude
tools of 50,000 B.C. and in some areas there are better tools dating to

Additional Notes

Note:Up to 10,000 years ago small bands of hunter-gatherers were widely
scattered north to south from Vietnam to Sumatra and east-west from
Burma to the Gulf of Tonkin. Spirit Cave excavations have shown a variety
of game - deer, pigs, monkeys, bamboo rats, otters, flying squirrels and
from the sea - carp and crabs. Nuts, beans and melons were also available.
(Ref. 297)

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The Far East: 8000 to 5000 B.C.

THE FAR EAST
Back to The Far East: Beginning to 8000 B.C.

While there were probably many people in the Far East at this period, most
remained in the Mesolithic stage. The Yang-shao painted pottery culture
people of China lived in small villages of perhaps one hundred cottages,
growing millet, keeping dogs and pigs and hunting with bows and arrows.
They buried their dead and practiced fertility rites. Japan had the Jomon
Culture, date of origin uncertain. The British Museum Guide lists it from
7,000 B.C. on but others believe it existed even at 8,000 B.C. or before. It
was a distinct hunting, gathering and fishing society with a low-fired hand
made pottery sometimes impressed with patterns made by twisted rope. The
word "Jomon" means "rope patterns". There is some evidence that the
people of this society were not the ancestors of the present day Japanese,
but rather those of the Ainu, now pushed into the northern fringes of the
islands by the later immigrants. The Jomon Culture was related to the
southeast China traditions and to those of the Soviet Maritime Province and

88) Additional Notes

In Southeast Asia people cultivated rice as early as 6,000 B.C. with
evidence found in Spirit Cave in northern Siam. Mesolithic cultures have
been identified in Vietnam, Siam and Malaya, with early cave sites
excavated in Sumatra, Borneo and Cambodia. In Thailand, by 6,000 B.C.,
people used a wide variety of foods, with many of the plants domesticated.
These included almonds, broad beans, betel nuts, cucumbers, peas, water
chestnuts and gourds, as well as rice. There was widespread distribution of
mankind in New Guinea by 8,000 B.C. with a flake tool-chopper stone
industry. Although some were already there by 6,000 B.C. more people
began arriving in the Philippines by sea from Indonesia, Malaysia,
Indochina and the Arab world. (Ref. 8, 175)

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ONANRWNE

Note:The earliest clear evidence for rice cultivation has been found near
Hangchow and is dated at about 5000 8.C. (Ref. 297)

The Far East: 5000 to 3000 B.C.

THE FAR EAST

Back to The Far East: 8000 to 5000 B.C.

CHINA AND MANCHURIA

There was a Neolithic Yang-Shao culture in both central and western China
with domesticated animals and cultivated millet, which reached a peak
about 3,000 B.C. The Chinese are not a homogeneous people, and represent
a medley of human varieties, different in origin, language, character,
customs and government. The earliest Chinese city was Liang Ch'eng of the
Lung-Shan Culture, dating to about 3,500 B.C. The inhabitants had great
technical skill and a high level of organization and ritual. Prior to that the
ancestors of the present Chinese civilization were developing an
agricultural community around 49000 B.C. in the loess covered highlands
of north and northwestern China, where the well drained soil of the river
terraces was ideal for the early crops. The Lung-Shan Culture appeared on
the lowland north China plain and eventually spread over all of China
proper except the southwest, but it had many regional variations. Overall it
was characterized by wheel made, unpainted, black pottery with a
burnished, lustrous surface. The people lived in walled communities on the
river plains, almost from Manchuria to Vietnam. They had rice as well as
millet, domesticated cattle and sheep. Their religion emphasized ancestor
worship (Ref. 8, 101) Additional Notes

JAPAN

Neolithic societies only.

KOREA

Neolithic societies only.

SOUTHEAST ASIA

There is evidence of a bronze industry in Thailand by 3,600 B.C. and
probably the tin came from Malaysia, which remains today the world's
greatest producer of that metal. Wild rice was cultivated at Non Nok Tha,
Thailand, by 3,500 B.C. Some excavations near the Loatian border at Ben
Chieng show bronze weapons and wheels, carved ivory and pottery, all
beautifully made. Sometime in this period Malayan people joined the first
inhabitants of the Philippines and Madagascar. Hypothetically some of
them could even have gone to Brazil around the south end of Africa (Ref.

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ONRDUARWNeE

Note:Human bones of this period have been found at Songze excavations
near Shanghai. Ritual ceramics were made with the potters' wheel and the
artisans were beginning to temper their wares during firing. (Ref. 314)

Note:Joyce White (Ref. 296) describes a current exhibit at Ban Chiang,
which has objects recently excavated from the Stone Age of 5000 B.C. to

the Bronze Age, beginning at least by 3600 B.C. These excavations
indicate settlement soon after 4000 B.C., with raised domestic stock and
probably rudimentary rice cultivation. Unusual was the use of metals, not
in an urban context, but in villages, in such things as spear points, axes and
personal ornaments. They had beautiful pottery from 3600 B.C. on, and the
culture, overall, lasted about 4,000 years. John Pfeiffer (Ref. 297) confirms
these findings and adds that 350 bronze bracelets, anklets, rings, axe and
spear heads were distributed among about 2,000 other objects. The bronze
seems to have appeared full blown without antecedent pure copper use.
Whether this was brought in from the outside or developed locally is not
known.

The Far East: 3000 to 1500 B.C.

CHINA AND MANCHURIA
Back to The Far East: 5000 to 3000 B.C.

Chinese legends are bountiful with alleged records at least back to 3,000
B.C., all of which are not easy to substantiate. Excavations in Chekany
province in central southern China have revealed a Neolithic Culture, the
Yang-Shao, which we have mentioned previously, with painted pottery,
dating to about 3,000 BC. The more wide-spread Lung- Shan, black pottery
culture peaked at about 2,000 B.C. The legends describe a number of great
emperors who taught the people marriage, music, writing, painting, fishing
with nets, domestication of animals and the feeding of silk worms.
Tradition has it that Empress Si-Ling, wife of the great Huang-Ti,
discovered silk about 2,640 B.C. Brick structures may have been erected
about 2,600 B.C. along with observations for the study of stars and the
construction of a correct calendar. Chinese medicine allegedly began with
the legendary Fu Hsi in 2,953 B.C. followed by Shen Nung, the Red
Emperor (Hung-Ti), who compiled the first medical herbal material, the
Pen-Tsao, about 2,800 B.C. He supposedly personally tested 365 drugs and
drew up the first acupuncture charts. More famous is the great medical
compendium, the Nei Ching (Canon on Medicine) allegedly developed by
Yu Hsiung, the Yellow Emperor (Huang Ti), about 2,600 B.C.. This was
transmitted orally until probably the 3rd century B.C. and was still later
revised in the 8th century of the Christian Era. The Nei Ching deals with all
phases of health and illness, prevention as well as treatment, including
acupuncture. Tea, which grows wild in Manchuria [footnote], was
cultivated there about 2,000 B.C. At first the Chinese merely chewed the

This tells something about the climate of Manchuria, in that tea cannot
tolerate frost or drought

From the middle of the third millennium B.C. the heart of the Yellow River
valley was densely populated. It took a large and disciplined force to drain
and flood control this flood plain. A small type of pig was found in every
hut and the ox-cart was known by 2,000 B.C. The horse and chariot came a

little later with the horses similar to the wild Mongolian ponies with heavy
heads and short legs. Foxtail millet and a small amount of wheat (spread
from the west) were grown. Rice was cultivated much later, beginning south
of the Yangzte[footnote], a foreign land, wooded, marshy and peopled with
nomads of a different race. The first truly urban, known civilization in
China was the Shang Bronze Age Culture of 1,700 to 1,600 B.C.. Hucker
(Ref. 101) says the Shang monarchy emerged from the Honan branch of the
Lung-Shan, black pottery culture and perhaps began as early as 1,176 B.C.
Recent excavations at Loyang and Chengchow demonstrate progressive
development from Lung-Shan into the ever more mature Shang. There
urban development was about 1,000 years later than that in Mesopotamia
and about 500 years after that in the Indus valley, so some elements from
the west undoubtedly diffused to China. The last twelve of the Shang kings
lived 273 years (beginning about 1,395 B.C.) in the An-Yang area at Yin-
hsu (the ruins of Yin). The entire dynasty is sometimes called "Yin" after
this capital. The Shang cities were large and had a high order of bronze
technology and horse-drawn chariots as well as a fully developed Chinese
writing system and a culture dedicated to war against the outlying
"barbarians". Their bows had a 160 pound pull and could kill at 200 yards, a
weapon later used by the steppe nomads and known to the westerners as the
Turkish compound bow. Although traditionally the Shang was described as
controlling most of northern China, actually it was probably a loose
confederation of clans. The Huang-Ho society, on the Yellow River, had an
ideographic script about 1,500 B.C. Wherever it appeared, writing in China
is generally admitted to be the result of diffusion from the west. (Ref. 211,

Trager (Ref. 222) says the rice was brought from the Mohenjo-daro
civilization about 2,300 B.C., but the source of this information is not given

JAPAN

Peopled with Neolithic societies.

KOREA

There is archeological evidence of people on this peninsula in a Neolithic
society by 3,000 B.C. (Ref. 113)

SOUTHEAST ASIA

Most of this area had peasant farmers and hunting groups and we know that
bronze was used very early in Thailand. Iron objects seem to have been
made there about 1,600 B.C. or even earlier. This was "wrought" iron, made
by heating ore only to about 1,083 degrees Centigrade and then hammering
away the slag from the iron globules. (Ref. 8, 215)

Waves of Stone Age people colonized the Indonesian islands from the
mainland. An Austronesian people using Lapita pottery appeared in the
Moluccas area of Indonesia sometime in this period, and they began to
migrate slowly eastward. From about 3,000 B.C. on, the Malays in the
Philippines were joined by a more advanced race from Indonesia. These
two peoples merged, building up a tribal system known as the barangay.
(Ref. 8, 175)

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Note:Recent excavations around Shanghai show evidence of an early
Neolithic Society at Hemudu, where the people cultivated rice and had
domesticated dogs, pigs and water buffalo and lived in wood-frame houses

with plank floors. They made silk and created baskets. This was before the
Shang period. (Ref. 314)

The Far East: 1500 to 1000 B.C.

THE FAR EAST

Back to The Far East: 3000 to 1500 B.C.

CHINA AND MANCHURIA (Shang Dynasty until about 1,122 B.C.,
then Chou)

About 1,500 B.C. China passed abruptly from the Neolithic state to a full
bronze age, probably getting bronze-working technique from the Near East
or Thailand, as the Chinese scholars claim. China received its first farm-
yard poultry as the domesticated jungle fowl from the Malayan peninsula.
(Ref. 222) The first historical dynasty, the Shang, as noted in the last
chapter, was a powerful political regime controlling most of northern China,
even though in actuality it was a loose confederation of clan domains, many
little more than village settlements. Two of their six capitals, at Cheng-chou
and An-Yang, have been excavated, the latter showing a Black Pottery
Culture. The people were basically Chinese, but some think that the
aristocratic, charioteer warrior leaders may have come from farther west in
the steppes. They used compound bows and bronze weapons. Fortifications
dating to 1,300 B.C. along the Yellow River have evidence of these same
warrior bands who may have originated on the Iranian plateau and moved
step by step from oasis to oasis, conquering the Neolithic societies in their
way. This was an aristocratic age with a sharp cleavage between noble
warriors and helpless peasants. A recent newspaper article reports that
Chinese scientists have uncovered the remains of 1,000 slaves killed as
human sacrifices near An- Yang. Supposedly these were sacrificed for
funerals or to honor the ancestors of the nobility, all demonstrating the
extreme cruelty and barbarity of the slave-owning nobility of this Shang
Dynasty. The religion was a mixture of ancestor and nature worship and
their script was ideographic and strictly Chinese. About 1,200 B.C. iron was
used in its meteoric form and treated like a semi precious stone. It was of
ten mounted in bronze fittings for ceremonial weapons. (Ref. 136, 235)

The concept of heaven dates to the beginning of this period, with the rulers
traveling north to Mount T'ai where sacrifices were made, sacred music
played and ceremonial dances accomplished. Shang-Ti (Lord on high), an
anthropomorphic god, lived in heaven and watched over the actions of
people and ruled the heaven of various spiritual beings who were
considered to be ancestors. (Ref. 26)

In 1,122 B.C. or perhaps a little earlier, the Shang were overthrown by the
Chou, a client people, possibly of different ethnic origin. Hucker (Ref. 101)
says they were Chinese speaking people of Lung-Shan descent. The Chou,
the Shang and the warrior charioteers mentioned above, all mixed,
providing the biological prelude to the first true, historic civilization of the
Far East. Toynbee (Ref. 168) calls this the original Sinic Society. Prior to
the overthrow, the Shang had considered the Chou as semi-barbarians and
"country cousins" but had finally conferred the title of "Chief of the West"
on one of their leaders and had given him a Shang noblewoman as a wife.
The Chou had probably early allied with and mixed with proto-Tibetan
people called "Ch'iang", considered no better than animals at one time by
the Shang. This idea of undermining Shang authority by making alliances
with neighboring chief s was conceived by a definite historical figure, King
Wen, and when his son, Wu, came to power as king of the Chou, he built a
new capital, Hao, near what is now Sian. Legend says that he then
accumulated 50,000 troops and in 1,122 B.C. overcame a Shang army of
700,000. Apparently many of the latter were unhappy with the last Shang
king and actually joined the Chou. Tradition also gives King Wu's brother,
the Duke of Chou, great credit for laying the groundwork for the long-lived
Chou Dynasty as he established seventy-one new administrative units and
built a new city at modern Loyang to serve as an auxiliary capital. (Ref.
168, 101)

JAPAN and KOREA

These areas were both still in a Neolithic stage with farmers and gatherers.

SOUTHEAST ASIA

There is archeological evidence of the Somrong-Sen Culture spreading
throughout all of Indo-China, including present day Vietnam, Cambodia,
Laos, etc. This was a full Neolithic culture, with early bronze activity
apparent about 1,000 B.C. in northern Viet Nam. H.O. Beyer found in 1948
that tanged and rectangular adz blades were used in the northern Philippines
between 1,750 and 1,250 B.C. and nowhere else in Indonesia or Melanesia.
The interesting sequel is that these are almost identical with those used
much later throughout Polynesia. The route of this adz and the people using
it from the Philippines to Polynesia can only be explained in one way
according to Thor Heyerdahl - up the Japanese Current to below the
Aleutians to the North American coast and then back into the Pacific.
(Please see the Pacific section) (Ref. 8, 95)

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The Far East: 1000 to 700 B.C.

THE FAR EAST

Back to The Far East: 1500 to 1000 B.C.

CHINA AND MANCHURIA (continued Chou Dynasty)

The leaders of the Chou Dynasty rewarded their aides by making them
almost independent rulers of the many provinces into which the new realm
was divided, thus setting the stage for a feudalism which eventually proved
dangerous to government, but stimulating to Chinese letters and philosophy.
At sometime during this period the Institutions of Chou was completed,
detailing the duties and organizations or physicians. Hao, south of the Wei
River, was the Chou capital until 771 B.C. when the last king of the
Western Chou Dynasty was killed by a noble, as his capital was overrun by
Northerners. A year later his son proclaimed Lo-Yang, south of the Yellow
River in Honan, as his capital. This started the time of the Eastern Chou
Dynasty, but the main functions of the king then began to be chiefly
ceremonial, as the various area lords controlled their own sections. This
feudal age was to last for some 500 years. It was different from European
feudalism in that the Chou ruling class was principally unified by kinship
ties and the king was considered as the head of a vast family. By 700 B.C.
there were three powerful feudal states giving only lip-service to the Chou
king. These were Ch'in in the old royal domain in Shensi, Chin in the north
and Ch'i in the east. This subdivision of the Eastern Chou, which lasted
over 250 years (722-481 B.C.) is called the "Spring and Autumn" era, after
the name "Ch'unch'iu" which has the same meaning. (Ref. 101, 125)
Additional Notes

Although there were some 200 Chou statelets by the 8th century B.C. there
were still many non-Chinese people about the borders who still had
sometimes military and sometimes diplomatic contact with the Chou court.
In the north were the "Ti", in the west and central uplands the "Jung", on the
eastern coast the "I" and in the south all non-Chinese were lumped together

as "Man". In the Yangtze delta region was a loose political entity called
"Wu" and farther south a Yueh state.

From the philosophical standpoint, there was now a shift from the fear of
spiritual beings to emphasis on human behavior and the groundwork was
laid for the later humanistic thoughts of Confucius. Technically the Chinese
also advanced and even built ice houses which were kept cool by
evaporation. They developed a curved mouldboard plow which overturned
the sliced sod, and was used continuously thereafter for rice cultivation.
This advancement in agriculture was not used in Europe for another 1,400
years. (Ref. 26, 211, 213)

JAPAN

By the beginning of the first millennium B.C., the northern Ainu people had
extended down to the central island of Honshu, while the southern
aborigines, speaking a form of Japanese, led sedentary lives as shell-fish
eaters. This situation continued until about 500 B.C. (Ref. 12)

KOREA and SOUTHEAST ASIA

These areas remained essentially as noted in the last chapter. Additional
Notes

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Note:Some scholars think that the collapse of the Western Chou Dynasty
in 771 B.C. may have been a result of a Scythian cavalry raid from the
Altai region. The records of cavalry harassment from Mongolia are not
clear until those of the 4th century B.C. (Ref. 279)

Note:Recent aerial photography over Khorat Plateau in Thailand has
revealed evidence of 60 moated settlements from 1 to 400 acres in size,
dating back to this 1st millennium B.C. This suggests the beginning of
centralization in that region. (Ref. 297)

The Far East: 700 to 601 B.C.

THE FAR EAST

Back to The Far East: 1000 to 700 B.C.

CHINA AND MANCHURIA (Continued Chou Dynasty)

The many provinces of early China gradually coalesced into five states
covering what is now the district of Honan and some adjacent areas. The
most important provinces were T'si, where the basic type of Chinese
government developed, and Chin (or Tsin), which gave to China the name
by which it is known to nearly all the world but itself. The organizing
genius of T'si was Huan Chung, adviser to the Duke of Huan (683-640
B.C.). As prime minister, Kuan Chung replaced bronze with iron weapons
and tools. Cast iron was used either in this century or the early 6th B.C.,
some 1,000 years before it was used in Europe. Sophisticated kilns
developed for firing ceramics laid the foundation for this, in reaching the
very high temperatures (1,835 degrees centigrade) necessary. T'si became a
well ordered state with a stable currency and efficient administration. A
code of manners, ceremonies and a sense of honor was developed and
served as a substitute for religion among the upper classes. Extensive canals
irrigated fields and agriculture and the silk industry prospered. Huan Chung
taught the farmers to dig drainage ditches, stored surplus grain and rented
farm equipment for them. (Ref. 222) Carts were used, leather shoes were
worn, and houses were well built, with tables and chairs available. In the
early years of the Spring and Autumn Era of the Eastern Chou, warfare was
really more of a polite gamesmanship with very limited real fighting and
few people hurt or killed. The art of diplomacy was supreme. (Ref. 45, 46,
101)

JAPAN

Three elements appear to be mingled in the Japanese race: A primitive
white strain through the Ainus, who seem to have entered Japan from the
region of the Amur River in Neolithic times; a yellow Mongol strain,
coming from or through Korea in this 7th century B.C.; and a brown-black
Malay and Indonesian strain, filtering in from the western Pacific islands.
Gradually a new race developed from this 7th century on. In the Japanese
mythology, 660 B.C. dates the legendary first emperor, Jimmu.

KOREA AND SOUTHEAST ASIA
Neolithic societies continued as previously, with metal in use in Thailand.

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The Far East: 600 to 501 B.C.

THE FAR EAST

Back to The Far East: 700 to 601 B.C.

CHINA AND MANCHURIA (Chou Dynasty, continued)

Although China was nominally still under the Chou Dynasty actually it was
essentially in a feudalistic age called the Spring and Autumn period. A
unique institution of this period was the hegemon (pa) which was rule by a
yearly conference of dukes from the three powerful statelets, offsetting the
ineffectiveness of the Chou king. From 600 B.C. on the peasants made real
progress in farming the flood plain of the Yellow River, by shifting from
millet to rice. Vast diking, draining, canalization and engineering control
was necessary to create an unbroken carpet of rice paddies. The amount of
labor involved in all this is almost unbelievable. Rice, originally a dry land
crop, still requires good oxygenation of its roots and the waters of the
paddies cannot become stagnant but must be regularly circulated,
necessitating constant attendance to pumps and various hydraulic systems.
Farther south the Yangste Valley could not be farmed satisfactorily at that
time, even though the river was much less wild and geologically less
difficult, because the warmer, wetter climate allowed a great variety of
parasites. Malaria may have been one of the worst, along with dengue fever
and schistosomiasis, which has been definitely identified in a later, second
century corpse. (Ref. 101, 140, 259)

This was the age of Lao-Tzu, the greatest of the pre-Confucius
philosophers. His identity is disputed, but at least the Taoist philosophy
became prominent with "Tao" meaning "The Way". Basically this was a
way of thinking or refusing to think, for in the view of Taoists thought is a
superficial affair, good only for argument and more harmful than beneficial
to life. The Way is to be found by rejecting the intellect and all its errors
and leading a modest life of retirement, rusticity and quiet contemplation of
nature. Knowledge is not a virtue but on the contrary, rascals have increased

since education spread. The worst conceivable government, in this
philosophy, would be by philosophers themselves, as they botch every
natural process with theory. Silence is the beginning of wisdom. Disregard
of the Tao led to illness, not so much as punishment for sin as the inevitable
result of acting against natural laws. Toaist philosophy became the religion
of a considerable sized minority of the Chinese from this century down to
our own time. Confucius, of the impoverished but noble K'ung family, was
born in 551 B.C. and it is said that he had some contact with and learned
from the Old Master, Lao-Tze. His teaching will be discussed under this
same heading in the next chapter. The standard of living in China at that
time was probably higher than in the contemporary Greece of Solon. (Ref.
46, 260)

JAPAN

The Jomon Culture hunting and fishing society of Japan continued through
this century.

KOREA

The Neolithic societies of Korea continued as in the previous centuries.

SOUTHEAST ASIA

The people who now occupy southeast Asia began at about this time to
leave their ancestral homes in southern China and Tibet and start their
migrations southward, displacing or absorbing the aborigines of the area.

Forward to The Far East: 500 to 401 B.C.
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The Far East: 500 to 401 B.C.

THE FAR EAST

Back to The Far East: 600 to 501 B.C.

CHINA AND MANCHURIA. (CONTINUED CHOU DYNASTY
UNTIL 403 B.C.)(THE FOURTH GREAT CENTER OF
CIVILIZATION)

The early century was the productive time of K'ung Ch'iu, known to us as
"Confucius"[ footnote] and one of the great philosophers of all time. He
taught no system of philosophy, merely how to think. He was essentially an
agnostic, but made a heroic effort to make men decent. The rules of
propriety and ways of living which he laid down in his five "Ching" or
Canonical Books were, however, a sort of strait-jacket preventing change in
the centuries to come. His was a prim and Puritanical way, without any
place for pleasure and little for friendship and love. Nobility was a matter of
education and conduct. Confucian gentle- men ruled China for over two
millennia and through most of that time gave a remarkable stability and
coherence to Chinese culture and politics.

"Confucius" is the Latinized version of K'ung fu-tzu, the latter word being a
superlative variation of "tzu", meaning "master", - thus "Master K'ung".
(Ref. 101)

Another philosopher, Mo Ti, appeared in the last half of the century,
teaching an opposite doctrine of universal love and peace. Although China
had known and used iron for some purposes for centuries, only in this
century can it be said that the country really entered the Iron Age, at
approximately the same time as Scandinavia, Britain and Ireland.

During this century the political climate of China changed. The state of
Chin became weak and was divided, leaving Ch'in, Ch'i and Ch'u as the
dominant powers nominally under the Chou Dynasty. Warfare became less
gentlemanly and states now went to serious battle, with the period
beginning in 403 B.C. thereinafter called the "Warring States era". The

crossbow and iron weapons were introduced and added to the deadliness of
war. Cast metal coins came into use not later than this century. (Ref. 101)

In Chinese medical diagnosis, the feeling of the pulse has always been of
primary importance and they have felt that interpretations of this could
reflect the condition of each internal organ. A pulse chart was originally
written in this or the preceding century by Pien Ch'iao. Exercise, massage
and complex combinations of food to get proper relation of yin and yang
were as much a part of treatment as medicines, although there were
eventually some two thousand items in their pharmacopoeia. (Ref. 125)

JAPAN

At about 500 B.C. the southern aborigines of Japan began to be replaced by
the Mongolian type of people associated with modern day Japan. Traces of
the southern aborigines’ curly hair, gray eyes, brown or even red beards,
may still be found in upland valleys, but their chief contributions to modern
Japan was their language. The newcomer Mongolians apparently just
drifted in by raft, canoe or boat and each group learned to speak the existing
native dialects, while they gradually brought in improved stone techniques,
thatched roofs, potters' wheels[footnote] and new agricultural ideas. Such
arts seem to have allowed the newcomers to survive and multiply to the
extent that they could push the aborigines back into the hills. (Ref. 12)

The British Museum Guide (Ref. 19) states that the Mongolians did not
introduce the potters' wheel into Japan until about 300 B.C.).

KOREA

Continuation of Neolithic societies.

SOUTHEAST ASIA

Continuing the centuries-long migrations from the north, some people
settled in Vietnam and Cambodia, becoming the Chams and Khmers; some
in Burma and east Thailand becoming the Pyus and Mons; some in the long
peninsula becoming the Malays. Others took to the sea, spreading
throughout Indonesia and eventually Melanesia. The Bronze Age began
here about 500 B.C. with some evidence of the use of iron in central Siam
(Thailand). We have noted before that there may have been bronze in
Thailand three millennia previously and we must assume that the Siamese
were far more advanced in metallurgy than their neighbors. (Ref. 8) Metal
was used widely in the Philippines by 500 B.C. and there was a spread of
agriculture, involving rice and millet. (Ref. 153)

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The Far East: 400 to 301 B.C.

THE FAR EAST

Back to The Far East: 500 to 401 B.C.

CHINA AND MANCHURIA (Warring States Period of the Chou
Dynasty)

The "Warring States" period continued, with chaos, corruption and division
of the country. Even so, in the midst of this there was a profuse
development of philosophies with rabid intellectual discussions as in earlier
Athens. Mencius was a successor to Confucius who re-stated the latter's
views and modified them so that he contributed greatly to the survival of
Confucianism. Very different although not incompatible with Confucianists
were the Legalists, who believed man basically bad and therefore must be
curbed by stringent laws. The Naturalists had introduced the Yin (female)
and Yang (male) principles which persist in Chinese thought even today.
Taoism was expanded in this period to say that everything in a material
world was relative, and that concepts existed only as contrasts. Eleven cities
were considered to be very large, including the Ch'i capital, Lin-tze,
consisting of 70,000 households, in modern Shantung province. By 325
B.C. regional lords had begun to call themselves "kings". Chopsticks were
used in China at least by 400 B.C. Although Chinese tradition teaches that
irrigation practices were still more ancient, it was in this and the next
century that they were used on a large scale, along with intensive land
clearing and the necessary hydraulics. (Ref. 46, 213, 260)

The marshy coastal districts did not lend themselves to charioteering so the
infantry armies of the southeastern states of Wu and Yueh began to
dominate the battles; chariot fighting declined and by 300 B.C. there were
infantry masses in the hundreds of thousands. But in the far west and north,
the non-Chinese nomads had developed cavalry for new assaults on China.
(Ref. 101)

It is said that about 329 B.C. a Chinese general conquered the Tien
Kingdom of Yunnan and settled there, introducing the Chinese culture to
this region although it did not come under direct Chinese control until the
7th century C.E.. Recent excavations have shown a Bronze Age culture
there with some indication of the use of iron. The art of the Yunnan people,
including animal drawings, seems related to the people of the steppes of
Asia. (Ref. 101, 176)

JAPAN

The Jomon hunting and fishing culture continued, with a mixed population,
as indicated previously. (Ref. 45)

KOREA

No new information available for this century.

SOUTHEAST ASIA

The peoples of Southeast Asia had developed a complex agricultural
civilization by this period, growing chiefly rice but also domesticated tubers
and legumes, especially yams[footnote]. Their work animals were the ox
and water buffalo. Bronze was not used in Vietnam until this century,
although it had been used in Thailand for some 3,200 years and in China for
900 years. The reason for the slow spread of the metal is unknown.
Burmese cotton was the best in the world and was exported in large
quantities to India. (Ref. 176, 213)

This refers to large tuberous roots of the climbing vines of the genus
Dioscorea and is not the same plant as the sweet potato of America which is
sometimes called a "yam" but is the root of the Convolvulaceae family

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The Far East: 300 to 201 B.C.

THE FAR EAST

Back to The Far East: 400 to 301 B.C.

CHINA AND MANCHURIA (Warring States period of Chou until 221,
Ch'in to 207 then Han from 202 B.C. on)

Two fundamental Chinese social aspects had become apparent by the end of
this Formative Age of the early dynasties:

(1) The concept of the patrilineal family as the basic unit in society, with
blood kinships of the highest importance and (2) the concept of natural
differentiation into classes, each regarded in proportion to their
contributions to the whole society.

In Shang times slavery had been common with the slaves being war
captives or criminals, but this decreased with the Chou Dynasty and finally
disappeared as social status became more fluid and transitory. With the
disappearance of the early feudalism, free-hold farming became the
dominant food support in the small amount of arable land available.

As population had greatly increased, there was no longer room for grazing
herds and the Chinese had settled for scavenger-breeding animal husbandry
consisting of plow oxen, pigs, chickens and occasionally dogs. Nomads first
started bothering northern China in earnest in this century. The nomads
were all milk-drinkers and still had the necessary lactose for digesting that
in their physiological make-up, while most Chinese didn't have that enzyme
after infancy because of the long scarcity of milk-giving animals. Yet today,
Chinese as a whole find milk indigestible because of this lack of lactose and
the classical Chinese have considered milk products unclean or tainted
since 2,000 B.C. Yogurt, curds or cheese can be eaten, however, because the
lactose sugar has been broken down. Stir fry cooking developed on the
flood plains as a result of the very limited fuel supply, using wafer thin
fragments of meat and vegetables which cook in minutes. Another

innovation can be seen when a basic bean is taken through several
processes and allowed to ferment in a loaf in a dark area over winter - then
the fungus is scraped off and the leaves are soaked in brine. The briny
liquid, when strained off, is "soy sauce". The debris of the loaves is made
into a thick "cheese", now partially blamed for the high incidence of
stomach cancer in Asia. (Ref. 101, 211)

Early in this century (as continued from the last) the Confucian principles
were kept alive and elaborated for posterity by Master Meng K'o, Meng-tzu
(Latinized - "Mencius") an extravagant, arrogant aristocrat who
nevertheless recognized that public morale should be the first concern of
every ruler and he did not hesitate to tell them so. But perhaps the greatest
Confucian thinker of the century was Hsu~n-tzu. a ruthlessly tough-minded
rationalist who set down his philosophy in a well organized book. In
addition, the present form of the Lao-tzu, the Taoist philosophy, was made
in this century with authorship really unknown. It has been called the most
profound and beautiful book ever produced by the Chinese and has been
translated into English more of ten than any book except the Bible. Its
meanings, however, can still be elusive and debatable. (Ref. 101)

The era of Warring States continued until 230 B.C. when Shih Huang-ti
began a campaign of conquest and unification of China which was
completed by 222 B.C., establishing the Ch'in Dynasty. Coming from the
Wei Valley, a true frontier country, the leader adopted this title of Huang-ti,
meaning "August Lord", but usually translated "Emperor", and "Shih"
simply means "first". He began as King Zheng of Qin at thirteen years of
age, when the country was initially ruled by the chancellor, Lu Buwei. This
First Emperor built the Great Wall of China, one of the greatest construction
feats of all time, to protect the nation against barbarians. Seven hundred
thousand forced laborers were used in building the wall and thousands of
them died, crushed beneath some of the massive gray rocks. The wall was
roughly 1,500 miles long and wide enough for six horses to gallop abreast
along the top. The nation's first standing army, consisting of perhaps
millions, was created to guard the wall from northern invaders and it did
discourage the Huns, who then turned west into Europe.

Shih Huang-ti spent thirty-six years building a subterranean palace in which
he could spend eternity and used seven hundred thousand conscripts to
build this, also. Recent excavations of his tomb indicate that a guardian
army of six thousand life-size pottery men and horses were constructed to
stand eternal guard at his tomb. In addition, however, he did build great
highways and encouraged science while discouraging letters and especially
Confucian scholars. He buried 460 of the latter alive. China was divided
into provinces with civil and military officials in a hierarchy of ranks;
writing was standardized and there was an elaborate postal system and a
great irrigation system in the Chengtu region of Szechwan. It was the
Chinese written language in ideographic characters whose meaning is
totally unrelated to local variations in pronunciation and spoken dialects,
and which can therefore be understood throughout, that provided an
important unifying instrument, even in the south which was occupied by
people of non-Chinese origin.

The Yangtze Valley and other southern territories, although under political
domination by the Chinese, could not be fully incorporated into the Chinese
social structure because of disease barriers[footnote]. Huang-ti did build the
Ling Canal, joining the Yangtze River basin to the Canton area via the Li
River, and this canal helped supply one-half million Chinese troops
conquering the lands to the south. The canal is now used chiefly for
ligation.

Even at the time of the "Flying Tigers" of World War II, General Chenault
wrote that cholera, malaria, typhoid and other lesser known diseases
plagued the people of this area. (Ref. 69)

In the countryside south and west of the canal one-third of the people even
today belong to minority groups such as the Zhuang, considered barbarians
by the Hans.

Following the death of the First Emperor, disorder and civil war broke out,
with nature adding its bit by floods and droughts. Shih's son was killed and
chaos reigned until Koa-tsu, a petty official, turned general and emerged as
the supreme ruler and founder of the Han Dynasty in 202 B.C.. The
Formative Age of China had ended.

Huang-ti is generally regarded as the author of the canon of internal
medicine called "NeiChing", but this may have originated much earlier.
This work says that the blood current flows continuously in a circle and
never stops. It describes acupuncture with needles from 1" to 10" long, a
system which is still used to restore the balance of Yin and Yang in the
body. It was in this century that iron weapons finally became common in
China almost a thousand years after its use in Thailand and in the West,
although the metal had been introduced some two centuries before. An
interesting point is that when the Chinese did start to use iron it was cast,
rather than wrought iron, and cast iron requires a heat of 1,400 degrees
Centigrade at which temperature the iron melts and the slag is drawn off,
allowing the molten iron to be poured into molds, like bronze. From the
beginning the Chinese smiths knew only this method, and the heat required,
which needs some type of blast furnace, was not produced in the West until

Notes

JAPAN

About 300 B.C., a new wave of Mongoloid immigrants from the mainland
introduced rice culture, bronze, and if it was not already there, the potter's
wheel to Japan, beginning the Yayoi Period. Although Chinese rulers had
kept the seri culture secret until this century it now came to Japan, perhaps
through Korea. (Ref. 19, 122) Bergamini (Ref. 12) states that in addition to
the bronze and rice, traders brought in iron at this time.

KOREA

The Korean people are related racially, linguistically and culturally to the
ancient peoples of Manchuria and Siberia as well as to the Japanese, but
their post-Neolithic civilization came largely from China. In this century,
among several existing states, the most civilized was Chosen, a semi-
sinicized community in the northwest. (Ref. 119)

SOUTHEAST ASIA

Distinctive, massive, bronze drums decorated with images of animals and
men date to 300 B.C. at Dong Son (North Vietnam). From the study of
material in the National Archeological Museum in Tripoli, North Africa,
Barry Fell (Ref. 66) writes that inscriptions copied from a cave in
northwestern New Guinea in 1974 appear to be the work of a Libyan
navigator who signed his name M-W (Egyptian "Mawi" means "navigator")
sounding like Polynesian "Maui". The date of the New Guinea inscription
was "the 15th year of Ptolemy III of Egypt" or 232 B.C. Further comments
regarding the possible significance of this finding will be given in the next
section. In 218 B.C. the Chinese Huang-ti, in his conquests, took over the
Red River delta area (now Hanoi and Haiphong) and brought strong
Chinese influences as well as Chinese blood to this area.

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Note:Ever since the beginning of this Han Dynasty, or slighter earlier, jade
has been imported to the eastern coastal region some 3,000 kilometers
from Sinkiang along the old Silk Road. That variety of nephrite is
considered the only true jade. Jade veils have been found in several
aristocratic burials of the late Eastern Chou period (770 up to 256 B.C.) in
Luoyang. (See also Additional Notes in 1st century C.E.) Iron battle suits
came into use in this century or earlier. (Ref. 306)

The Far East: 200 to 101 B.C.

THE FAR EAST

Back to The Far East: 300 to 201 B.C.

CHINA AND MANCHURIA (The "Former" Han Dynasty continued)

As briefly noted in the last chapter, between 206 and 202 B.C. Kao-tsu, a
condot-tier, had seized the throne of China and founded the Han (Western
or Former) Dynasty. Freedom of speech and writing was restored and a
laissez-faire style of governing allowed prosperity and population growth.
Although Kao-tsu died in 195 B.C. his wife and descendants ruled
conservatively through the first half of the century. Taxes were cut
markedly, but still the state granaries were full and the government had vast
cash reserves. The greatest Han emperor was Wu-Ti, who in the last half of
the century pushed back invading barbarians and extended China's rule over
a vast territory, including Korea, Manchuria and even part of Turkestan.
This western territory (Tarim Basin and the Turf an Oasis) was obtained by
war against the Hsuing-nu, the tribal federation of central Asia that had
developed along with the Chinese Empire and which had previously raided
China as well. The western area became important because of the Chinese
Silk routes to the West. Even by this century the Chinese had become very
active in the silk trade, starting caravans at Paochi, moving along inside the
Great Wall to its western end, then across Chinese Turkestan, then either
north or south of the Tarim Basin, through the Pamir Mountains to Merv.
The silk road had not functioned well before the time of the protection of
the Chinese Hans, because of the nomad pirates.

Wu-ti experimented with socialism, founding great government industries,
transportation services, deliveries and miscellaneous services, developed
governmental control of prof it and levied a 5% income tax. He made
Confucianism official and the Confucian classics were reassembled and
transcribed. Through his conquests, south and west, contact was made with
the Indian cultural sphere. This was accomplished by sailing 3,000 miles

south through the straits of Malacca around the Malayan peninsula and the
1,200 miles across open seas to the Indian shore near what is now Madras.
Seasonal monsoon winds were used for power on both the original and
return trips, in different seasons. Chinese ocean-going junks had a much
better sail arrangement, better cargo and cabin space and many other
features unknown to western ships for many hundreds of years in the future
. Cowrie shells, the first Chinese money, probably came from the far away
Maldive Islands. The Chinese ambassador, Chang Chien, spent more than
ten years in the middle east, gathering information on drugs, viticulture and
many other subjects. Sometime during this Han Dynasty a noted clinician,
Tsang Kung, described many diseases, including cancer of the stomach,

Additional Notes

JAPAN

Megaliths, similar to the ancient ones of Europe, appeared in this century
throughout Japan and they continued to be built for the next eight or nine
centuries. Strangely none appeared in China. This was the beginning of the
Yayoishiki Culture period in Japan, but the people were still in a neolithic
stage. These inhabitants, who now began rice cultivation, weaving and the
use of metals such as bronze and some iron, may all have been immigrants
from Manchuria and perhaps Korea, replacing the more native aboriginals
of the Jomon period. They definitely had some relationship with Korea.
(Ref. 215, 45)

KOREA

The state of Chosen continued to prosper. Near the end of the century at
about 108 B.C. an alliance of the Koreans with the Hsiung-nu provoked the
Chinese emperor, Wu-ti, who promptly sent troops and established an Han
colony at Lo-lang, near the modern P'yongyang. (Ref. 45)

SOUTHEAST ASIA

Much of the mainland area of southeast Asia was now controlled by China
with north Vietnam being subject to the Chinese for the next 800 years. But
there was also foreign influence from India. Development of seafaring in
the Indian Ocean and the China Sea allowed the people of the Ganges,
already tolerant to tropical parasites, to implant Indian court culture along
the river valleys and islands of southeastern Asia, even in Indonesia. In
spite of the tremendous geographical area involved, however, powerful
civilizations did not develop, probably because of the attenuating effects of
malaria, dengue and waterborne infections of the gastro-intestinal tract. The
use of iron spread from Siam to Borneo and Palawan by about 200 B.C.
(Ref. 8, 140)

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CONAUBRWN FP

Note:During the reign of Emperor Wu (140-86 B.C.) the use of jade burial
suits for the aristocrats came into its own. The tomb of Liu Sheng, Wu's
brother, provides the best early example of this type of jade burial shroud.
(Ref. 306)

The Far East: 100 B.C. to 0

THE FAR EAST

Back to The Far East: 200 to 101 B.C.

CHINA AND MANCHURIA (“Former” Han Dynasty continued).

At its peak the Han Empire under Wu-Ti was exceedingly prosperous,
rivaling Rome both in size and wealth. The capital city Ch’ ang-an had
250,000 in a total population of about 57,000,000. While the progress of
mechanization was impeded in Greece and Rome by the number of
available slaves, China had too many efficient coolies. (Ref. 260). We noted
above that Wu-Ti expanded into the Tarim Basin in the west by defeating
the Hsiung-nu and this pursuance continued even after Wu-Ti’s death. In 61
B.C. the chieftain of the southern Huns came to Ch’ang-an to submit as an
Han vassal, while the northern group continued to be chased far westward
into Samarkand, there to be finally defeated by a five-pronged Han force in
36 B.C. But in China proper the economic controls lapsed and nepotism and
cronyism resulted in the loss of the imperial family’s power.

A type of national university had come into existence to prepare men for
bureaucratic careers and by the end of the century the enrollment had
reached 3,000. In the Han militia system all males registered for military
service at 21 years of age and were eligible for service between the ages of
23 and 56 years. Allegedly every male was to have military service in his
home county one month every year and one year of continuous service
sometime in a guard unit, but soon a practice of paying poorer men to serve
one’s time became standard practice. In addition to using cowrie shells as
currency, copper coins, later called “sapekes” by the Europeans, came into
use. Both of these competed with salt and grain as a medium of exchange.
(Ref. 260). In this century the Chinese drilled deep holes, presumably for
water, in Szechwan and their drilling methods were copied centuries later in
the United States. (Ref. 213)

In early China the laws required punishments and torture that equaled that
seen in Europe at a much later period. Death penalties were carried out by
beheading or by chopping the offender in two at the waist. In cases of
treason or some equally serious crime, all the offender’s relatives might also
be put to death. Lesser offenders might simply be mutilated by tattooing,
amputation of nose or feet or castration. Impriconment was rare, but hard
labor on government construction was used for minor offenders. In
Emperor Ch’eng’s reign (32-7 B.C.) authority was delegated to his mother’s
family, the Wang clan. Ssu-me Ch’ien was a great Chinese historian of this
era. (Ref. 8, 101).

In Manchuria a new state of koguryo was founded in this century and soon
also included northern Korea.

JAPAN

The Yayishiki Culture continued into this century with rice culture
appearing about 100 B.C. Animism and totemism, sex and ancestor worship
satisfied the religious needs of these early Japanese. Out of the latter
worship came the oldest official living religions of the nation — Shinto. This
faith, called the Way of the Gods, took three forms; the domestic cult of
family ancestors, the communal cult of clan ancestors and the state cult of
the imperial line with its founding gods.

A Mongolian castaway group on Kyushu multiplied so rapidly as farmers
that they took over all the arable land on the island and while some of the
aborigines became serfs, others took to the hills from where they continued
to raid the farmers for centuries. The new Kyushu community was
organized as a loose confederacy of villages, each ruled by its own
matriarch or fertility mother, and the woman leader of the most powerful
town was Called the “Sun Goddess”. Early Chines traders called her “Pime-
ko”, or “Hime-Ko”, meaning “Sunshine Child”. (Ref. 213, 136, 12). In an
attempt to obtain more sea-food to feed the expanding popuations, a great
ship-building effort was made in 81 B.C. (Ref. 222).

KOREA

Most of Korea was controlled by the Han Chinese at this time, but the
northern portion was allied with Manchuria in the new state of Koguryo.

SOUTHEAST ASIA

Already controlling North Vietnam, the Chinese now added central Viet
Nam to their territory which they were to maintain for centuries. No other
significant changes occurred.

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ONAORWNP

The Far East: 0 to A.D. 100

THE FAR EAST

Back to The Far East: 100 B.C. to 0

CHINA AND MANCHURIA ("Former" Han to A.D. 9, Hsin to A.D.
25, then "Later" Han)

At the beginning of this century China's population was just short of
60,000,000. Interrupting the Han Dynasty, the Wang clan was acting as
regents for a boy emperor and the last of these regents, Wang Mang,
gradually outmaneuvered all opposition until by A.D. 9 he could declare the
Han Dynasty defunct and take the throne himself. Even so, he was the
highest type of Chinese gentleman and promoted many improvements for
the country, including the abolition of slavery and the redistribution of some
very large, landed estates among the peasants. He continued state
monopolies of salt and iron and added other state ownerships. As of ten
happens with such planned economies, however, some natural calamities,
including a series of poor harvests, drought in the Shensi basin and a series
of breaks in Yellow River dams resulting in vast flooding with changes in
the river's course and thousands of drowned and homeless people, upset
everything, revolts broke out and he was killed (A.D. 25). Things reverted
to the previous situation and the rule fell to a scion of the House of Han,
inaugurating the "Later" Han Dynasty which was to last until A.D. 220. It
was this dynasty which helped to defeat the Hsuing-nu as detailed under
Central Asia. The restorer of this Han Dynasty, Kuang-wu-ti, moved the
capital to Loyang in Honan and thus the term "Eastern Han" is sometimes
used as synonymous with "Later" Han. Kuang-wu-ti at the same time
allowed a group of southern Hsuing-nu to settle in northern Shensi and
Shansi provinces. He and his immediate successors were vigorous,
conscientious rulers and the population and economy rapidly rebounded.

The Han emperors sent soldier-farmers to the far western extensions of the
Great Wall in the region of present day Jiayuguan, to secure their frontier,

even as the Communists have done recently. They watered the desert by
building irrigation systems to bring down mountain snow-waters, set up
mulberry plantations for silk worms and prospered. This was on the original
southern silk route. The Chinese preferred to let others do their hauling and
in these centuries silk either went over-land on the silk route or to India in
Indian boats and from there on in either Indian, Greek or Arab vessels.
(Ref. 101, 46)

The year 67 marks the coming of Buddhism to China. The first known
manufacture of paper dates to about A.D. 100. In this century these far
easterners used power drive bellows and blast furnaces, such objects not
seen in Europe until the Middle Ages. The principle of the compass was
also known in China at this time and was used on Chinese ships long before
it appeared in the west. (Ref. 215) Additional Notes

JAPAN

At about the time of Christ the current Sun Goddess (See preceding
chapter) allied herself with a marauding pirate trader from Karak, Korea
(modern Pusan) and later arranged for him to marry her granddaughter. A
son and grandson of this marriage ranged widely up the Inland Sea,
exploring and provisioning along the southern Honshu coast.

When the grandson, Jimmu, became of age, he moved his entire pirate fleet
- ships, warriors, women and utensils away from the matriarchal Kyushu
across to Honshu, at what is now Osaka. Because the local southern
aborigines there needed help against the hairy Ainu hunters from the north,
they welcomed Jimmu's warriors who also found an iron ore with the right
impurities for making steel. Within a few generations Japan was in the steel
age, making the finest blades of the world. After three years of
campaigning, about A.D. 50[footnote], Jimmu proclaimed himself Emperor
of an area which includes present day Osaka, Kobe and Kyoto, and he
called this "Yamato". Jimmu was the present day Emperor Hirohito's
ancestor, 69 generations removed, and practically all present day affluent
Japanese are his progeney or that of his three most able lieutenants,
Nakatomi, Mononobe and Otomo. Jimmu and his immediate descendants

practiced a savage, spartan puritanism which equated cleanliness with
godliness, using countless ceremonies of ritual purification. They seemed to
be terrified of the pollution of death, and when an emperor passed away, the
entire capital was moved to a new site.

The chronology used here, of Jimmu's "coronation" at A.D. 50, is that of the
archaeologist Edward Kidder. Official Japanese dating, adopted for
ideological purposes, places this some 600 to 800 years earlier. (Ref. 12)

On the local spirit worship Jimmu built the basis for later Shintoism, adding
the continental worship of ancestral ghosts. He showed his people a bronze
mirror, a bright sword and a string of semi-precious, half-moon shaped,
smooth stones and made these the talismans of his divinity, allegedly
bestowed on him by the Sun-Goddess. These objects have been protected as
symbols of the divine emperor down to this day. (Ref. 12)

During the first four centuries of the Christian era this imperial Yamato clan
seems gradually to have taken over most of central and western Japan in a
long series of wars with other clans and the Ainu in the east and Kumaso in
the west. The latter appear to have been of alien and quite possibly southern
origin. A Japanese embassy was established in China in 57. (Ref. 119)

KOREA

Records from Korean kingdoms show that from A.D. 42 to 562 Karak,
Miniana, as the Japanese later called it, and which we now know as Pusan,
was recognized as an independent Japanese city-state. This may originally
only have been a way-station for raiders going to the far south Malayan
area. In the north, Koguryo and other states at- tempted to assert their
independence from the Chinese colony in the region. (Ref. 12)

SOUTHEAST ASIA

The Chinese Han Empire extended its civil administration over Chinese
colonies in North Vietnam. In South Vietnam and present day Cambodia
there was the state of Funan, perhaps started by Khmers with an Indian

spiritual background. It prospered by its position on the trade route between
India and China. In the Mekong delta the people built canals to control
floods and to limit the intrusion of salt water on to the land. Java and
neighboring islands were conquered by Hindu princes from India and
thereafter a number of Hindu empires divided the region. (Ref. 8, 176, 119)

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NOU BWN FE

Note: Although jade suits, constructed like a complete set of armor, were
used as burial shrouds for royalty throughout the Han Dynasty period, one
of the best, completely restored suits is probably that of Liu Gong, Prince
of Pengcheng and son of Emperor Ming (A.D. 58-76) (Ref. 306)

The Far East: A.D. 101 to 200

THE FAR EAST

Back to The Far East: 0 to A.D. 100

CHINA AND MANCHURIA (Later Han Dynasty)

In the entire first half of the century there were a series of Han Dynasty
empresses ruling weakly for themselves and/or various infants and youths,
with the help of some very clever court eunuchs. By A.D. 157 the
population had reached a peak of almost 55,000,000. Han court records
refer to Roman ambassadors with dates of visits and the names of current
Roman emperors, but conversely these embassies are not mentioned in any
known Roman records. The Chinese government's return to laissez-faire
policies allowed the great land- owners to again dominate the serfs and
avoid taxes. Then a series of natural disasters occurred, beginning with
massive floods and locust infestations at A.D. 175. At about the same time,
in at least two different years, there were great pestilences which broke out
in the army fighting on the northwestern frontier, with three or four out of
ten dying. This plague, whatever it may have been, apparently seeped down
all through Asia to some degree in the next 20 years. Peasants began
seeking refuge in Taoist inspired religious cults, which offered faith healing
and alchemical prescriptions. (Ref. 65, 101, 140)

It was the massive religious uprising of the "Yellow Turbans" against the
palace eunuchs in A.D. 184 which finally began to bring down the Han
Dynasty. The remaining eunuchs were finally massacred by Yuan (War
Lord) Shao in 189 and the capital Loyang was sized by General Tung Cho
in 190. Some 700 other officials and some 1,000 students were thrown in
prison and tortured and cannabalism has even been alleged. In this Later
Han period the student body of the national university had swelled to some
30,000 youths, many apparently evaders of military and other state service.
Local militias were now abolished to lessen local war-lordism and although

the dynasty continued officially on into the next century, in actuality the last
few years were an era of chaos and divided states. (Ref. 8, 119, 101)

Chinese art, astrology and astronomy appropriated some Hellenistic
elements, but it is of interest that in many simple items the Chinese were far
ahead of the western world. For instance, in this century the Chinese used
wheelbarrows, cranks, objects mounted in gimbals to keep level (as
shipboard lamps), treadles and rotating fans, none of which were used in
Europe until variously the 9th to the 18th centuries. Paper was invented by
Tshai Lun in A.D. 105 and was made from decayed vegetable matter,
although the process was kept secret by the Chinese for many centuries.
The chair was introduced in this or the next century but didn't come into
general use for several hundred years. Most of southern China remained in
the hands of aboriginal peoples for centuries to come. (Ref. 215, 8, 213,
260) Additional Notes

JAPAN

For five generations after Jimmu, the Yamato emperors were very careful
not to mix their blood with the aborigines and they imported women of their
own race from the home fief in Korea. Each prince and vassal had as many
wives as he could afford and the old records tell of families with 100
children. After the first five generations, Jimmu's court descendants began
to marry their own cousins and although the inbreeding was great, the stock
was healthy and a large percentage, probably more than one-half, of modern
Japanese are descended from it. At A.D. 200 the Empress Jingu is said to
have sent a vast fleet of multi-oared ships to dominate the Koreans and
exact tribute. (Ref. 12, 222)

KOREA

Koguryo continued as an independent state, and there were now other
communities which could break away from the weakened Han control. At

the end of the century part of Korea was forced to pay tribute to Japan.
(Ref. 222)

SOUTHEAST ASIA

We noted in the last chapter that China had occupied North Vietnam and
Champa. In this century the Hindu influenced state of the Chams arose in
the area now known as South Vietnam, but north of Saigon. For the next
1,200 years they struggled to remain independent of the expanding Viet and
Khmer kingdoms. Funan existed as a prosperous state in the Cambodia and
extreme southern Vietnam areas, developing a network of irrigation and
transportation canals that made the huge Mekong River valley fertile and
the country rich with commerce. Burma, Thailand, Cambodia and Laos
became the chief lands for the Hinayana or Lesser Vehicle Buddhism. (Ref.
8, 176, 114) Additional Notes

Note: Although the exact time of the first use is unknown, the cross-bow
was in use in China at least by Han times, when it became the principal
weapon. This excellent, lethal instrument was about as easy to use as a
handgun and needed no special strength to cock it, while the long bow
required years of practice to develop sufficient thumb and finger strength
to draw the bow to its full arc. Technically, manufacture of the cross-bow
involved a most difficult lamination procedure using wood, bone, horn and
sinew, as well as the skilled construction of a metal trigger apparatus. (Ref.
279)

Note:The Chinese met resistance in trying to conquer Vietnam completely
and, no longer able to feed their armies so far from their bases, they had to
retreat, allowing Vietnam its historical independence. In the Mekong delta

an inland center called "Oc-eo" was a small scale Venice. It had many gold
artifacts, including a seal ring with Sanskrit inscription, a life-sized Hindu

statue and gold metal from Rome, dated A.D. 152. (Ref. 297)

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The Far East: A.D. 201 to 300

THE FAR EAST

Back to The Far East: A.D. 101 to 200

CHINA AND MANCHURIA (Han to 220, Three Kingdoms to 280,
then Chin)

At the beginning of the century the capital was at Lo-yang and northeastern
China grew in importance. The Han Empire now reached as far south as
Haiphong, but "The force of the imperial unity played itself out in 220,
when the last of the Han emperors officially abdicated at the bidding of a
general who had already kept him in custody for several years." (1) There
followed a period of disordered life and a stalemated civilization, during
which time there were three kingdoms: Wei, in the north, directly following
the Han Dynasty, under Ts'ao P'ei; Wu, in the southeast, based at Nanking
under Sun Ch'u~an; and Shu, controlled by Liu Pei and based at Chengtu in
the southwest. Liu Pei and his family, originally lieutenants of General
Ts'ao Ts'oa, protector of the last of the Hans, then became the greatest
enemy of the Wei, giving rise to legends, fiction and drama in China for
centuries to come. Even so, Shu Han was absorbed by Wei in A.D. 263 and
Wu gave way in 280, ending the Three Kingdoms era. In the meantime, the
Ssu-ma family generals had taken over Wei and changed the name to Chin,
and for a generation after 280 China again had a fragile unity. The
population at that time was only 16,163,0009 a drop from 55,000,000 in the
middle of the 2nd century. A severe pestilence was a major factor in this
population decline, as in Europe at the same time, but at least part of it was
due to wide-spread cannibalism. China had entered her four centuries of
"dark ages". The southern Hsiung-nu lived on the frontier as a hostile
minority and the long delayed clash was about to occur. (Ref. 8, 139, 68,
101)

Mo Ching wrote the Pulse Classic, an intensive method of diagnosis from
study of the pulse, a procedure still used in China and which had originally

been described in the 6th or 5th century B.C. Chang Chung-ching wrote a
classic treatise on "Typhoid and other Fevers" and it was perhaps in this
century that Ko Hung described beriberi, hepatitis, and plague and gave an
early report on small-pox with an accurate description of the pustules.
Chinese medicine continued to progress from this time until the 10th
century, when it became static. Although sugar cane was known near
Canton, it was not commuted to sugar, proper, and honey remained the
universal sweetener. (Ref. 136, 125, 213)

JAPAN

Sometime between A.D. 200 and 250 the 10th emperor, Sujin, had the royal
bronze mirror and the sword enshrined outside the palace for all to see and
admire. The mirror, called "the mirror of knowledge" was housed at a
shrine called "Ise", which even today is a prime holy place of Japan. The
Yamato Culture of Korean origin was introduced with iron implements and
megalithic burials. Handicrafts were soon organized into guilds. Beneath
this artisan class was a slave class, recruited from prisons and battle- fields.
Social organization was partly feudal, partly tribal and each clan had a
sovereign head. Government was primitively low and weak, although it was
a period of geographical expansion and victory over the Ainu. (Ref. 12, 19)

KOREA

This was a period of some turmoil, with early century invasions by
Kungsun Manchurians and late century conquests by the Chinese of the Wei
Dynasty. About A.D. 250 northern invaders established the state of Paikche,
in the southwest.

SOUTHEAST ASIA

Burma was under Indian influence and by this era Hindu peoples had
established commercial settlements on the coast and river mouths. These

settlements developed into small kingdoms in contact with Tibeto-Burmese
tribes. Champa, Funan, Viet and Khmer kingdoms continued rivalries. The
Chinese controlled Haiphong and it is probable that Chinese and Indian
traders met at Go Oc Eo in southern Cambodia, from whence the Indians
carried the Chinese goods on across the Malay Peninsula and on to India.
From A.D. 200 on the island kingdoms of Indonesia derived their
civilization from India, through contacts with Hindu traders and Buddhist
monks. (Ref. 8, 176)

REFERENCE Quotation taken from Mc Neill (Ref. 139), page 324.

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The Far East: A.D. 301 to 400

THE FAR EAST

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CHINA AND MANCHURIA (Chin to 316, then north-south division
with Wei)

We ended the last century with the new Chin Dynasty ruling a somewhat
unified China but this era was dominated by great landowning families,
each with hundreds of serfs and private soldiers. In A.D. 304 a sinicized
Hsiung-un chieftain established a state called "Han" (later Chao) in Shansi
and from there he sacked the Chin capital at Loyang seven years later. At
this same time a great pestilence, preceded by locusts and famine, left only
one or two people out of a hundred alive in the northwestern provinces of
China. In 322 another epidemic, which may have been small-pox, hit with
three out of each ten dying. Maximal political fragmentation coincided
almost exactly with the arrival of this disease and the population, overall,
was nearly halved. The political upheavals involved several short-lived
dynasties of foreigners from the steppes, some Hsiung-nu, some proto-
Mongolian Hsien-pei, some Turkic and Avar and even some Tibetan tribes.
It was the Shansi Hsiung-nu who again overwhelmed the new Chin capital
at Ch'ang-an. They were led by Liu Yuan who was six feet tall and had red
strains in his long beard[footnote]. Subsequently this area of northern
Honan, in central China, was ruled by the Chieh, one of the 19 tribes of the
Hsiung-nu. These Chieh had high noses and full beards and were definitely
non-Mongolian, perhaps Tocharian, in origin. They were finally massacred,
all 200,000 of them, in A.D. 349 by Jan Min who then became lord of the
region. (Ref. 101, 140, 8, 127)

Maenchen-Helfen (Ref. 127) gives this as additional evidence that the
Huns, which presumably descended in part from the Hsiung-nu were a
mixed group, probably including some "Europoid" elements

Refugees from the north set up a new Eastern Chin Dynasty at Nanking and
in 347 they reconquered Szechwan but in the latter half of the century a
Tibetan general, FuChien, temporarily consolidated the north. His plan to
add the south was wrecked at a famous battle of the Fei River in 383 when
he was defeated by the Eastern Chin. Finally in 386 a powerful Turkic
people, the Toba (Northern Wei) who became avid Buddhists, succeeded in
re-unifying northern China once again. Their kingdom actually included a
large part of Siberia and Manchuria, carrying the absorbed Chinese
civilization to the Arctic. This has been compared to Charlemagne's Empire
in that in both the barbarians became civilized - "Chinicized" or
"Romanized" respectively. The Buddhist art of north China was profoundly
influenced by Central Asia for the next 200 years, although in the south, as
the Chinese achieved some mastery of the concepts and terms of Indian
Buddhism, they began to develop schools of their own (Ref. 8, 19, 101)

JAPAN

Southern Japan was still in the Great Tombs or Kofun Period, in which the
nobles used pottery coffins, high-fired stoneware, iron and bronze
implements and weapons. (Ref. 19) The victories of the half-legendary
Prince Yamatodake over the Kumaso and the Ainu seem to reflect a period
of rapid expansion in the early decades of this century. There were many
Japanese campaigns now onto the Korean peninsula by the armies of the
Empress Jingo, with the establishment of a Japanese protectorate over a
group of miniature states known as Kara or Imna, in southern Korea.

The 12th emperor, Keiko, who reigned probably from A.D. 280 to 316
returned to Kyushu and after getting rid of the queens of the ancient, savage
tribe he negotiated a permanent merger of Yamato and Kyushu.

As Yamato grew in geographical size, chiefly by driving the Ainu farther
and farther north, the population increased and the emperors, like the
Egyptian pharaohs, began to construct vast mausolea. Each successive ruler
wanted a bigger tumulus and a larger company of victim vassals to be
buried with him and convey him to the spirit world. Forced retainer
sacrifice was practiced routinely in this and the next century. (Ref. 12)

KOREA

By A.D. 313 the last remnants of Chinese colonies were extinguished by
the native states of Korea, although Chinese culture remained dispersed
throughout the peninsula.

Three kingdoms emerged: Koguryo in the north; Paekche in the southwest;
and Silla in the southeast. All had high-fired pottery of great excellence.
The Japanese foothold, mentioned in the second paragraph above, was
established between the two latter kingdoms. (Ref. 19)

SOUTHEAST ASIA

Tibeto-Burmese tribesmen migrated from the north into present day Burma,
forming the Pyu Kingdom. Chenla was the country of Khmer people
occupying what is now Thailand and Laos. Funan, under its Khmer rulers,
continued as a prosperous agricultural and trading country on the
Cambodian plateau. Active civilizations existed in the Indonesian area with
sea-faring men trading with Africa and Europe. Cinnamon from Malaya and
Indonesia was sent all the way to Rome. (Ref. 176, 211)

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CHINA AND MANCHURIA (Northern and southern dynasties)

The ruling Toba Wei had become completely Sinicized by this time and had
carried out a redistribution of land to bring more under cultivation and
rehabilitate the economy in northern China. The southern dynasty, the
Eastern Chin, pushed northward regaining access through Kansu to the
central Asian trade routes but through court intrigues and usurpations there
was an ever increasingly weaker series of dynasties, including Sung (42?
-429) and southern Ch'i (479-502). Even so, these southerners, considering
themselves the saviors of the old Han civilization, absorbed most of the
aboriginal peoples of the south China area into the Chinese mainstream, as
Buddhism became the predominant intellectual and religious force. (Ref.
101)

There was also intense activity in philosophical as well as religious thought.
Taoism broke into sects and never became a unified religion. Ch'an
Buddhism (similar to Japanese Zen) was brought to China allegedly by
Bodhidharama. Chinese junks sailed regularly to the head of the Persian
Gulf with cargoes for Babylon, although little or no apparent exchange of
ideas and techniques occurred between east and west. The junks, for many
centuries, had had single rudders, water tight compartments and staterooms,
all far advanced inventions not used by westerners for up to 1,600 years
later. The ships carried fresh ginger growing in pots and thus unknowingly
prevented scurvy. (Ref. 8, 215, 211)

JAPAN

The mausoleum constructed for Emperor Nintoku, who may have died in
427( footnote], is a moat-girded artificial mountain, 80 acres in area, more
than one-half mile long and after 1,500 years of weathering still over 100
feet high. It took 20 years to build by conscription labor. Japan's royal
family has refused any excavation of any of the royal mounds to this day. In
this 5th century the Chinese system of ideographic writing was brought to
Japan but phonetic symbols had to be invented to express the Japanese
word endings and it was actually another 200 years before it became a real
vehicle for Japanese thought and record. In the meantime, during the reign
of Inkyo, music and dance were promoted and Chinese Buddhism was
introduced and began to rival Shintoism in popular favor. (Ref. 12, 46, 213)
This date is from Bergamini (Ref. 12) but there is some confusion here in
that Durant (Ref. 46) indicates that the next emperor, Inkyo, started his
reign in 412

KOREA

The Three Kingdoms period continued. King Changsu brought Kogurya to
the height of its power and moved the capital from the Yalu River to
P'yongyang. Silla continued expansion in the south. (Ref. 222)

SOUTHEAST ASIA

No important changes from the last century have been identified from the
literature and the reader is referred to those previous centuries.

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CHINA AND MANCHURIA (Northern and Southern Dynasties to 581,
then Sui)

The T'o-pa Turks of Manchuria gave way early in the century to a new
nomadic empire of the Juan-Juan tribes, a mixture of proto-Turk and proto-
Mongol elements. Overthrown in 551 they migrated westward to become
the Avars of European history. The powerful Korean state of Koguryo
controlled a part of Manchuria in this period.

The northern part of China continued to be dominated most of the time by
nomadic border tribes. Among these was the Western Wei Dynasty which in
the middle of this century adopted an old Mongol tribal institution in that
every family that had more than two sons had to send one for permanent
service in one of the 100 garrisons in the state. The militiamen were exempt
from taxes and other labor levies and this system, called "fu-ping", was
intended to separate elite fighting men from the farming population. In
some form it persisted through several centuries. There were other nomad
intrusions and civil conflicts, but the invaders always adopted Chinese
customs and culture and the Chinese upper class, particularly in northwest
China collaborated and intermarried with the Turks and Hsien-pei with a
resulting Sino-nomad aristocracy, many people speaking both Chinese and
Turkish. It was from this mixture that came the ruling house of the Sui, who
took control in 581 and finally unified all of China under a Chinese, Yang
Chien, who had previously been a minister of the northern Chou court.
(Ref. 101, 8)

This was the great age of Mahayana Buddhist sculpture in China, as this
type of the religion had swept into the country from India and flourished
there as it lost ground in its homeland. At this time China built suspension
bridges held up by chains, a procedure not used in the West for some 1,200

years. The rebuilding of old canals linking the capital, Ch'ang-an, with the
Yellow River in 584 contributed to stability and work was started on what
westerners call the Grand Canal, linking the Yellow and Yangste rivers. All
this was done under Wen-ti (581-604)5 a Sui emperor who was an effective
administrator and skilled propagandist. (Ref. 215, 101)

JAPAN

Up until about this time the Japanese islands formed part of a large culture,
nomadic in origin, which included Manchuria, eastern Siberia and Korea.
We mentioned in the last chapter that Buddhism had crossed over from
China to Japan via Paekche, Korea and it made rapid conquest with the help
of Emperor Senka. (Ref. 222) Unfortunately the Korean missionaries also
brought a lethal disease, perhaps small-pox, and epidemics followed in
Japan about each thirty years throughout the remainder of the century,
although some medical help came from China. Both the religious needs of
the people and the political needs of the state gave Buddhism fertile ground.
This was not the agnostic, pessimistic and puritan philosophy of Buddha,
himself, but the Mahayana variety of gentle gods, cheerful ceremonies and
personal immortality. It offered the people that unity of feeling and belief
which serves as a source of social order. With it also came fine and useful
arts such as painting, sculpture, architecture, music, bronze works, textile
making and medical arts. The written Chinese language continued to be
modified into a complex system by adding phonetic elements to the
ideographs, for writing the Japanese language. The period of Haniwa
sculptures of human figures, generally coil-built cylinders of unglazed,
iron-bearing clay, fired to a warm buff color, has representation today in the
Rockefeller collection. (Ref. 46, 186)

In 587 Emperor Bidatsu (31st emperor) embraced Buddhism on his death
bed but the clan of court armorers, the Mononobe, would have none of this
and they rebelled and burned Buddhist temples far and wide. But the
Kyushu ladies’ faction at the court exterminated this clan, bringing to power
the son of a Mononobe mother, Prince Shotoku Taishi, who agreed to a
Chinese type of program for strengthening the nation. Prince Shotoku was a

child prodigy who had mastered the Chinese system of writing by the age of
seven. We shall hear much more of him in the next century. (Ref. 12, 222)

KOREA

In the north, Koguryo continued as a powerful state with some territory also
in Manchuria. In the south, Silla finally adopted Buddhism and then began
to make rapid progress in civilization and in geographic expansion at the
expense of the adjacent Japanese colony. By 554 Silla won an outlet on the
East China Sea in central Korea, giving her easy sea communications with
China. Chinese medicine spread to Korea at this time. (Ref. 119, 125)
Additional Notes

SOUTHEAST ASIA

Dvaravati, Thaton and Pegu were Mon kingdoms appearing at this time in
what is now southern Burma. They spread Buddhism that ultimately
became the faith of most of the peninsula. Around A.D. 550 the Funan
Kingdom was overthrown by the Kambujas, a mountain people from
Chenla (Laos), after floods had ravaged the Mekong Valley. Their king was
also of the same royal line as the Funan (a Khmer) and these people were
closely tied to the Hindu tradition and deities. (Ref. 176)

Note:It was the Sorabol people of southeast Korea who formed Silla and
Pak Hyokkose, supposedly of miraculous birth, was the first king. (Ref.
305)

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The Far East: A.D. 601 to 700

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CHINA AND MANCHURIA (Sui to 618, then T'ang Dynasty)

The Sui Dynasty consolidated China in part through state patronage of a
style of Buddhism which was acceptable by both north and south and by
construction of a canal system linking the Yangzte with the Yellow River in
the Peking region. They did not do well in foreign affairs, however, as they
had lost the Tarim Basin, Manchuria and Korea and several early wars to
reclaim these lands had failed. Some historians have even considered the
first Sui emperor of this century, Yang-ti, a complete madman who had
supposedly poisoned his father to get the throne. (Ref. 101) Civil war soon
developed and victorious was the family of Li, who established the T'ang
Dynasty. In A.D. 610 we find the earliest description of bubonic plague,
which soon became common in Canton on the sea. Perhaps this plague was
a factor in the demise of the Sui Dynasty. (Ref. 8, 211)

For a short while the warlike Turkish nomads of the steppes became allies
of the new T'ang Dynasty and the Chinese even adopted Turkish fashions,
developed Turkish Chinese dictionaries and wore Turkish clothes. The
T'ang, like the Sui before them, came from a mixed Turkish-Mongolian-
Chinese aristocracy. Their second ruler, T'ai Tsung (AD. 627-650) was one
of the greatest of Chinese emperors. All the aristocrats of this period were
of the mixed blood and characteristically hard-drinking, hard-riding,
fighting men who hunted with falcons and whose women played polo. We
have noted that in the preceding centuries work had been started in the
clearing and draining of the luxuriant jungles of the Yangtze Valley so that
by the beginning of this century this valley not only supported a large
population but was capable of producing large surpluses of food. To widen
the canal between the Yangtze and Huany Ho Valley, about 5,500,000
workers, including all commoners between 15 and 50 years of age in some

areas, were concentrated under the control of some 50,000 police. They
were forced laborers but not slaves, in the true sense. As a result of all this
the T’angs had a double base, the Yellow and the Yangtze rivers, and by 611
the Grand Canal joining the two had been completed so that shipments of
large quantities of rice and other goods was possible from the south to the
northern capitals. The imperial bureaucracy managed the collection,
transport and distribution of such goods, while the Great Wall in the north
was re-constructed for defense. These factors of a biological mix, a thriving
economy and the spiritual stimulation of Buddhism, with a genius ruler,
started China on its greatest age. T'ai Tsung, after reunifying much of China
by war, returned to his capital, Ch'ang-an, and gave himself to the ways of
peace, spreading the philosophy of Confucius, revising penal laws and
beautifying the city. He welcomed all religions and exempted all temples
from taxation. After his death, one of his harem women, Wu, pulled out of a
nunnery by T'ai Tsung's oldest son, Lao-tsung, poisoned her way to power,
made herself empress and proclaimed the Chou Dynasty. Actually a
subsidiary of the T'ang this dynasty ushered in another creative age, with
the profits of exported rice, wheat, silk and spices spent for unparalleled
luxury. Furs, precious jewels, statues, paintings, poems and money were
everywhere in abundance. (Ref. 211, 101, 213, 139)

The fu-ping system of military conscription, started by the Wei Dynasty
(see page 423), evolved to the T'ang system of elite, career soldiers who
also performed agricultural work to support themselves, as far as possible.
The T'ang had more than 600 garrisons clustered primarily around Ch'ang-
an. Their statuary punishments came under five categories: death by
strangulation or bisection; exile from home (up to 1,000 English miles);
hard labor for up to 3 years; beating with heavy bamboo rods up to 100
blows. Commutation to fines was often possible for people of wealth. (Ref.
125, 101)

In the period of their foreign excursions in the 660s Chinese armies
intervened in India and Central Asia, re-occupying the Tarim Basin,
Dzungaria and Afghanistan and they briefly sat up protectorates in
Tukharistan, Sogdiana, Ferghana and even eastern Persia. Yunnan came
under Chinese suzertainty at the end of the century and a portion of
Manchuria, previously under Korean control, was returned to China as

Empress Wu intervened in a Korean civil war. After three centuries of
importance the use of the armored, great Persian horses in cavalry units
came to an end in China. If a cross-bowman could knock even a heavily
armored man off his horse, it made no sense to have these expensive units.
(Ref. 101, 279)

Sun Szu-miao wrote a 30 volume summary of medical knowledge gained
up to that time and then headed a committee which produced a 50 volume
treatise on pathology. It was in this century that examinations were first
required to qualify as a physician, a process that preceded the first licensing
program in the West by some 4 centuries. It was about this time that women
of proper family started to bind their feet (i.e. the mothers bound the infants’
feet) producing a severely deformed, cavus foot. This greatly restricted their
activities and allowed their legs and mons to accumulate much fat, thus
supposedly making them very attractive sexually to the Chinese men. The
custom was continued for a thousand years.

JAPAN

As the century opened, the child prodigy, Prince Shotoku Taishi, had
formed groups of scholars who wrote the first histories, geographies,
grammars and legal codes of Japan and who drew up orderly plans for a
census, land surveys, equitable conscription and taxation. He also worked
out a compromise between Buddhism and Shintoism that could be tolerated.
At his death in 621, the Shinto princes and the Buddhist princes of the
imperial family actually came to a small war, with the Nakatomi family
eventually winning power to put Crown Prince Tenji on the throne. He
carried out Shotoku's ideas which were known as the great '"Taika
Reforms". (Ref. 12)

Despite these civilizing factors, within a generation of Prince Taishi's death
a violent crisis appeared which included a terrible famine with thousands
dying. Along with this developed a strange new religion called
"Tokoyonomushi" in which devotees worshiped a large worm, drank sake
and danced in the streets, giving away money. (Ref. 222) A palace
revolution produced such a marked change that native historians refer to it

as the "Great Reform" of 645. The Japanese government was reconstructed
into an autocratic, imperial power. The sovereign was elevated from the
leadership of the principal clan to paramount authority over every official in
Japan, thus creating a closely-knit monarchical state. The emperors were
allowed as many wives or consorts as desired and the heir to the throne was
picked from any of his off-spring. The early emperors were devout
Buddhists but Shintoism was never completely abandoned. Japan then had
an embassy in China and Chinese civilization continued to be imported via
Japanese students, monks and physicians studying in China. (Ref. 125)

In 670 when the old Nakatomi reformer who had put Tenji on the throne
was dying, the emperor sent a pregnant concubine of his to comfort the old
man. When the boy child was born the emperor gave him the name
Fujiwara, and it was this boy's descendants, the Fujiwara clan, which took
the place of the Nakotomis as the emperor's most intimate counselors for
the next 1,275 years.

KOREA

China tried to conquer Korea again in 612 and failed but did essentially
accomplish this in 668 as the Chou Empress Wu intervened in a Korean
civil war and helped Silla to forge a united Korea while holding a few areas
under Chinese suzertainty. As Koguryo was destroyed China also regained
some Manchurian territory formerly dominated by these Koreans. Within
two years Silla had pushed the Chinese out of Paekche and started the
period which was the acme of Silla power and culture. Buddhism and its art
flourished, particularly at the capital near the modern Kyongju. Skilled
metal work was one of the special accomplishments. Additional Notes

SOUTHEAST ASIA

It is as difficult to record and explain the history of southeast Asia as it is
the Balkan peninsula of Europe, in that in both the names and borders of
many small countries have changed almost as rapidly as the years. In this

7th century there was a Cambodia where small Hindu temples were being
built at Angkor Borei. A Sanskrit inscription in Cambodia of A.D. 604
shows a decimal position, suggesting an advanced knowledge of
mathematics. The Funan Empire continued under control of Chenla and in
Pyu (now Burma) a Buddhist capital of Srikshetra (now Hinawza) was
founded some 200 miles north of present Rangoon, in 638. In Thailand the
earliest kingdom was of a Mon people from lower Burma, who settled in
the valley of River Menan and established a capital at Dvaravati, from
which comes the name of their kingdom and their art. Under Isaravarman
(611-635) the Khmers extended westward and developed great artistic and
hydraulic engineering projects. (Ref. 8, 175, 19, 45)

In the Indonesian archipelago, the Empire of Srivijaya, based in Sumatra,
dominated the straits of Sunda and Malacca and taxed the commerce in
those waters for the next six centuries. Palembang, in southeast Sumatra,
besides being the capital of that maritime empire, was a center of Sanskrit
Culture. (Ref. 8)

Note:It was in A.D. 688 that Silla absorbed Paekche and Koguryo. Their
capital city had 178,936 households with 1,000,000 people and was one of
the world's greatest cities of the time. Buildings were roofed with tile and
heated by charcoal. The burial burrows of that period are great archeology
treasures. (Ref. 305)

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CHINA AND MANCHURIA (Continued T'ang Dynasty)

After the death of Empress Wu the true T'ang Dynasty resumed control. Of
particular note is Ming Huang (or Hsuan Tsung) (712-756), the "Brilliant
Emperor" under whom China stood in the very forefront of civilization, the
most powerful, enlightened, progressive and best-governed empire on earth.
By the middle of this 8th century the imperial officers began exchanging
excess grain for various luxury goods and the effect was to expand a market
for highly skilled artisan wares such as fine silks, porcelains, lacquer works,
etc. A substantial enlargement of merchant and artisan classes ensued, with
an increase in urban growth. Sugar cane, native to Bengal, was imported in
China and adapted itself readily in the neighborhood of Canton where a
wooded hinterland supplied the great amount of fuel necessary for its
processing. Tea, known in Szechwan for centuries, now spread throughout
the country. (Ref. 260) From the Han to the T'ang dynasties China's
population had varied greatly but had now built back up to about 50 million
people, kept from being still larger, at least in part, by infanticide. (Ref. 46,
101)

The army was professional and largely recruited from and commanded by
"barbarians". In fighting with the expanding Arabs in west Turkistan, the
Arabs were helped by the Karluk Turks, who attacked the Chinese from the
rear. In the steppe, the Uigur and Girghiz Turks were now in control and the
last of the Turkic peoples to reside in Mongolia. In China, proper, in 754,
75% of the total population lived north of the Yangtze River. The city of
Ch'ang-an had 2,000,000 inhabitants with half of those living within the
walled inner city of 30 square miles. A total of 26 cities had registered
populations of over 500,000. The oldest datable printed materials were

produced in 770 when 1,000,000 copies of a Buddhist charm were run off
by commission from a Japanese empress. (Ref. 101, 213)

It has been said that Emperor Hsuan-tsung lived too long, because in 745 at
age 60 he fell in love with one of his sons' concubines, Lady Yang (Yang
Kuei-fei), and soon her family monopolized the most powerful ministerial
posts. One of these, An Lu-Shan, an audacious Turk, had the run of the
palace as Lady Yang 's adopted son. Soon thereafter when the "barbarians"
of Asia again bore down on the Chinese borders, An Lu-Shan, then a
general, rose in rebellion against the T'ang forces and they had to be
recalled from the frontiers to defend the emperor. The rebellion was
checked in 763, but the T'ang Dynasty had been eroded and Chinese power
did not return to central Asia for six centuries. (See also previous section,
this chapter). This type of revolt by a border "guard" was always a threat to
the Chinese central authority and explains, in part, their continual efforts to
keep the military under tight control. The same paranoia determined their
policy of breaking up undue concentrations of wealth. No one - military
commander or rich trader — was ever to be in a position to challenge the
authority of the political ruler. (Ref. 279) In the An Lu-Shan revolt some 3,
500,000 lost their lives and this was followed in 762 by a plague in
Shantung province with more than one-half of the people dying. The
disease risk in the south was greater than the risk of death on the nomad
frontier. (Ref. 101, 140) Intervention of the Uighur Turks from Mongolia
helped to save the T'ang Dynasty after the tragedies, but thereafter the T'ang
court was essentially a vassal of the Uighur khan. In this period of tragedy
from revolt and disease, Chinese poets reached great heights, with Li Po
becoming the "Keats" of China.

In Manchuria, the proto-Mongolian people, the Khitan, had begun to raid
the Chinese border as early as 695 and they continued throughout this 8th
century. A little to their east were the P'o-Hai, a powerful kingdom set on
the Chinese model but established by the remnants of the Korean Koguryo
nobles. They remained independent from 710 on for some two centuries.
(Ref. 8)

JAPAN

We have previously indicated that for centuries it had been the custom for
the Japanese royal family to change its capital each time a ruling emperor
died. The so-called Nara period started with the capital at that city in 710,
but this metropolis was too large to be torn down and moved each
generation and that practice was stopped, at least until the final move to
Kyoto in A.D. 794. Both Nara and Kyoto had been constructed using
Baghdad as a model. (Ref. 8) After Emperor Kammu transferred his capital
to Kyoto, Japanese art, previously under Chinese influences, developed its
own mature style and taste. (Ref. 19) After Kammu's death the emperor's
role deteriorated somewhat. Throughout this period, under Fujiwara
ministers, court life had become a great pageant of ceremonies and
costumes, and gradually the emperor's person, itself, became so taboo and
awe-inspiring, as a rouged and gilded doll, that he began to be veiled from
the world and the Fujiwaras took all responsibility for decisions, good or
bad, shielding the throne. gradually came to believe in an emperor who was
at the same time "a mortal god, a zero infinity, an impotent omnipotence"
[footnote]. New civil and penal codes and the Yoro Laws, which were
revisions of the Taiho Reforms, came into effect about 757 and gradually
became more effective.

The quotation is from Bergamini, (Ref. 12)

In 752 the Great Buddha at Nara, a 53 foot bronze figure, was dedicated as
the cherished project of the Shomas. At the end of the century, in 790, Japan
had a sustained epidemic with women under 30 years and males of all ages
afflicted. (Ref. 140)

KOREA

Most of Korea was now united under the Silla Dynasty. Buddhism and art
flourished, particularly at the capital on the site of modern Kyongju.

SOUTHEAST ASIA

The T'ai, or Shan, peoples had been infiltrating down into the southeast
Asian peninsula for several centuries and now they formed a kingdom in
Yunnan province of China.

The Dvaravati kingdom of Khmer people was Buddhist, rather than
Brahman in religion, and in this century migrants were sent to the upper
Menam Valley where they established the independent Kingdom of
Haripunjaya, with a capital near the present Chiengmai. All of this occurred
in what is now Thailand. Burma was under Indian influence and had Hindu
commercial settlements on the Tenasserim coast and at the principal river
mouths. In Cambodia the war-like course of the Chenlas was brought to an
end when a king from Java entered and beheaded the Chenla ruler.
Although the Javanese soon withdrew, that kingdom declined. On the
Atlantic coast was Champa, under strong Indian influence. (Ref. 119, 37, 8)

Throughout the first millennium after Christ, but particularly from the 7th
to the 16th century, Indian culture and religious influence spread throughout
Indonesia and in particular it created a distinctive civilization in Java. This
society, controlled by the Buddhist king of the Sailendra Dynasty, was
second only to the Khmers in southeast Asia. (Ref. 18, 19) In this and the
next century, Arab traders brought the Moslem religion to the Philippines
and then, in turn, came the Indians. (Ref. 153)

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CHINA AND MANCHURIA (Continued T'ang Dynasty)

The "Eastern Turks" pretty well dominated Manchuria at this time. In China
it was an age of weak rulers with the emperor almost a vassal of the Uigur
Khan. Even what power the emperor had was lost to the eunuchs of his
court and the situation ended in violence. The first surge of religious
persecution occurred between 843 and 846 when the rich Buddhist
monasteries were suppressed, perhaps chiefly for fiscal reasons. In 845,
44,600 Buddhist establishments were destroyed, 260,500 monks and nuns
were put back onto the tax lists and 150,000 of them were enslaved.
Chinese Buddhism never recovered from this blow. In this connection it is
interesting to note that in the far northwest corner of China there are 60
meter-high cliffs running for some 1,600 meters, near the town of
Dunhuang, in which caves of various sizes had been filled with Buddhist
sculptures for generations. There are still some 600 caves in as many as 4
levels. After A.D. 781 the area had been occupied by invading Tibetans but
in 848 the latter were expelled and the caves came under control of local
families nominally under allegiance to the Chinese T'angs but in actual fact
acting as a separate kingdom throughout the remainder of the century and
even after. In this way these beautiful art works were protected from the
severe persecution of Buddhism occurring in the other parts of China. (Ref.
282) These Dunhuang caves are not the only ones of this type. We have
previously mentioned the Caves of the Thousand Buddhas of Asia, on page
444, and now we should mention the Longmen Caves in the limestone cliff
s just south of the capital of Luoyang along the Yi River in Henan province.
Started in 494, these carvings were continued throughout the T'ang period
and still show 1,300 grottoes, 750 niches and 40 pagodas decorated with
almost 100,000 images. (Ref. 285)

In addition to the destruction of Buddhism, China suffered a series of bitter
peasant rebellions between 874 and 883. In 1879 when the rebels took
Canton, thousands of Moslems, Jews, Christians and Manicheans were
slaughtered. Prior to this the Chinese had been tolerant of Manicheism,
which was the religion of their erstwhile allies, the Uigur Turks. After the
latter were defeated by the Kirghiz Turks in 840, however, the necessity for
tolerance disappeared and Manicheism was banned along with Buddhism.
(Ref. 12) Gunpowder was made in this century with saltpetre, sulfur and
crushed charcoal, although it was not used in firearms for another two
centuries. (Ref. 260)

JAPAN

The Fujiwaras ran Japan skillfully over most of the entire period from 670
to 950. They exerted influence partly through their sisters and daughters,
who for 1300 years, were the chief source of wives and concubines of the
palace so that Fujiwara women bore no less than 54 of the 76 emperors
between 724 and Hirohito's birth in 1900. In A.D. 808 over 1/2 the
population of Japan died of disease which may have been bubonic plague,
since it had been on the China coast just prior to this. After that tragedy,
however, Japan entered its Golden Age, with progress in civilization and
technology which incidentally brought an increase in social distinctions. It
was a period of handicrafts with silks, wood- work, porcelains, lacquers and
painted paper screens. The court ate rice, radishes, fish, Soya-bean yogurts
and cheese, with wild boar, venison and pheasant along with uncultivated
vegetables such as bamboo shoots, mushrooms and lotus roots, but the
peasants ate barley, millet, fish, oysters, seaweed, beans, radishes, wild
herbs and ferns. Buddhism demanded no meat-eating and the court
encouraged the people to be pious, while privately subsidizing guilds of
butchers and meat cooks. (Ref. 12)

Other great families arose - the Taira, the Minamoto and Sugauara, who
subsequently made and unmade emperors. They were military families who
established heritary dictatorships, reducing the emperors apparently to mere
puppets[footnote]. A simplified, somewhat phonetic, alphabet called
"Hiragana" with 51 basic characters was developed to partially supplant the

Chinese Konji with its thousands of characters. (Ref. 222) Disease hit again
late in the century when the "coughing violence"| footnote] struck in 861,
862 and 872. (Ref. 46, 140)

This has been the traditional western view, as for example in Toynbee,
Reference 221, but more recent investigators have a different interpretation
of the emperor's power. See JAPAN, next chapter

This was probably whooping cough. (Ref. 140)

Buddhism persisted in Japan and won even greater support when Kukai
brought the Shingon|[footnote] or Tantric sect back with him from China in
806, founding a monastery which became one of the great centers of
Buddhism. Posthumously, Kukai was given the title Kobo Daishi (great
teacher and propagator of Buddhist law) and the places associated with his
early asceticism and the temples he founded later became objects of
pilgrimage.

Shingon means "The True Word". (Ref. 200)

KOREA

As in China this was a period of political decline, although the Silla
Dynasty remained in power. Buddhism survived here, even though it was
under persecution and fading in China.

SOUTHEAST ASIA

Thailand continued under the Dvaravati control while the Burmese empire
of Pagan superseded the fallen Pyu. Champa, Pegu and Thaton continued as
Separate and distinct states.

In Cambodia the Khmers' Chenla Dynasty, under Jayavarman II, set up
three capitals in 802 in the Tonle Sap Lake region at the present site of
Angkor and this became the center of a vast expanded Khmer Empire. They
received Indian scholars, artists and political leaders while they continued
to develop both Hindu and Buddhist art. Jayavarman IT had himself

declared a God-king, the earthly incarnation of Shiva, establishing a cult
which provided legitimacy for 30 Khmer kings of Cambodia and its
satellites. (Ref. 19, 176) About 885, Indravarman I constructed a vast
irrigation system which sparked the great Angkorian Khmer Empire.
Farmers were able to draw water in the long, dry, winter season and three
rice crops a year became a possibility. Under this king the Khmers built
Hariharalaya, 15 miles southeast of the site that was to become Ankor
Thom. In addition, a year after his coronation, Indravarman had arranged
for the excavation of a baray[ footnote] five miles long and a mile wide and
in 881 he had begun the Bakong, the first great monument built entirely of
masonry in Ankor. (Ref. 176, 45)

A "baray" is a reservoir for water.

In the great southern islands there were the Srivijayan Empire of Sumatra
and the Sailendra Empire of Java, with the latter the dominant nation of all
southeast Asia in this century. Although there were some Hindus there,
administration was Buddhist and their greatest architectural
accomplishment was the majestic Borobudur, a stepped pyramid of
unmortared andesate and basalt volcanic stones, standing 105 feet high with
a base 403 feet square. Situated in the tropical forested Kedu Plain, it is a
three dimensional model of the Mahayana Buddhist cosmos. Its 160 bas-
relief sculptured panels represent the World of Desire and another 1,300
carved panels depict the World of Form, as they show scenes and teachings
from the life of Buddha and Buddhist texts. (Ref. 286)

Elsewhere in that area, Arab dhows rode the monsoon winds for Zanzibar
ivory, Malayan tin, Indian spices and China silk. These merchants carried
Islam to Indonesia. Megaliths, recently discovered in remote areas of
Borneo, date to this era. (Ref. 8, 176, 2, 215)

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The Far East: A.D. 901 to 1000

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Back to The Far East: A.D. 801 to 900

CHINA AND MANCHURIA (T'ang to 907, Divided Kingdom to 960
and then Sung Dynasty)

In Manchuria (and a part of Mongolia) Khitan tribes established the Liao
Dynasty about A.D. 916 and overran part of China as the T'ang Dynasty
collapsed. The Liao administration was well established in the P'o Hai area
of eastern Manchuria by 934 and they executed invasions of northern China
in 936 and 960, using siege machines, metaled corselets and helmets, with
disciplined troops organized on a decimal system similar to that of the
ancient Assyrians and the Mongol armies of the future. (Ref. 279) The
name "Cathay" was derived from Khitae or Ch'i-tan, as they were
sometimes called. They resisted Sinicization better than any other invader
and retained their tribal nomadic life while remaining essentially
Shamanists. Their use of human sacrifice and brutish punishments were
particularly offensive to the Chinese. (Ref. 45, 8, 68, 101)

Having become the dominant war-lord of north China by 900, Chu Wen
soon took the imperial T'ang court at Ch'ang-an under his protection and
then slaughtered the ruling eunuchs. He followed this in 904 by murdering
the emperor himself, installing a boy successor for three years and then
taking over the throne personally. But with this turmoil and the Liao
pressure, China broke up into the "Age of the Ten States". It was only in
960 that reunification was accomplished by General Chao-Kuang-yin who
founded the northern Sung Dynasty, using a bureaucracy of Confucian
officials and an almost socialistic control of the economy. The Sung,
however, had to pay tribute to the Manchurian Liao all through this and the
next century and they were never able to recover the northern tier of
Chinese provinces.. In Charles Hucker 's classification the year 960 marks
the end of the Early Empire of China. (Ref. 101)

Throughout all the political changes of the century the cave temples of
Dunhuang, mentioned in the previous chapter, went undisturbed and, in
fact, carving in the caves continued. Today there are still 492 grottoes on
five distinct levels. (Ref. 282, 285) Paper money first appeared in A.D. 950
and the first report of chemical explosives for military use was in A.D.
1,000. By that time the Chinese seemed to have achieved biological
accommodations to their previous infections and the population began to
jump rapidly. In spite of malaria, bilharzias, and dengue fever the Yangtze
Valley was finally conquered. (Ref. 101, 140)

By the year A.D. 1,000 China had reached its "modern" form and it
changed very little thereafter until the 20th century. In comparison with the
West, the limitations of this society were:

1. Human agriculture production (instead of animal and plow) kept a
narrow margin between subsistence and production per agricultural
head and gave less chance for a high standard of living for common
people

2. A low level of peasant consumption of artisan products, which were
essentially restricted to landlords and officials. European
manufacturing, although on cruder material, catered to a wider base

3. Merchants were disreputable in China, as Confucius had ranked them
near the bottom of the social scale. This inhibited the development of
massive mercantile capital and hindered trade abroad. Thus,
exploitation of Chinese inventions like paper, porcelain and gun-
powder had to wait for the looser ordered society of western Europe.
This was one of the side effects of the "command" system mentioned
at the beginning of this chapter

(Ref. 139, 279)

JAPAN

Under Daigo, greatest of the emperors set up by the Fujiwara clan, Japan
continued to absorb and began to rival the culture and luxury of China. The
period 901 to 922 is called the "Engi period" and was the acme of the

Golden Age. Wealth accumulated and gave rise to great luxuriousness in
dress, cuisine, manners, arts and tastes. Literature flourished as the
syllabary simplification of Chinese characters allowed extensive writing in
the Japanese language. In 905 the Kokinshu, an anthology of over 1,000
poems in Japanese, was completed by imperial order and within a century
Japanese prose was to rise to great heights. The imperial family's Shintoism
fell into disuse.

The curtain that the Fujiwaras put around the throne was not meant to stifle
its occupant but only to shield it. When an emperor showed talent and
interest he did not exercise power while remaining emperor, but would
abdicate in favor of one of his children, go to a monastery, set up his own
court and administration and there he would run the Fujiwaras, who ran
Japan. It is Bergamini's (Ref. 12) concept that throughout history, even
including the time of World War II and Pearl Harbor, that the imperial
family always ran Japan, although they exerted their domination through
the powerful families of the court, such as the Fujiwaras[footnote]. By A.D.
950 the emperors, who had never set up royal lands for their own income,
found themselves dependent on the Fu jiwaras for money and at the same
time the nation seemed to fall apart into baronial estates, each with its own
Iron Age companies of soldiers. (Ref. 46, 12) Further epidemics of the
"coughing violence" (probably whooping cough) between 920 and 923,
mumps in 959 and an unknown pestilence of 994 and 995 when over one-
half of the population of Japan died, undoubtedly contributed to the decay
of the state as the century progressed. Chinese acupuncture had spread to
Japan by the end of this century and a medical school was founded by Wake
Hiroya, based on Chinese methodology. (Ref. 140, 125)

This concept of true power resting ultimately in the Japanese emperor from
the beginning throughout history to the 20th century is a relatively new one,
put forth by Bergamini in his book published in 1971. (Ref. 12) The
previously unanimous view was typified in the 1958 text of Peffer (Ref.
242) when he says that: "In any analysis of the major elements in the
composition of the Japanese scheme, the emperor deserves a minor place".
(Page 39) He felt that the emperor's cabinet and Diet were the ornamental
and dignified figureheads with the reality being in others, at least until very
recent times

KOREA

In A.D. 918 the Koryo Dynasty began in west central Korea and was to rule
for almost 500 years. By 935 it had peacefully absorbed the Silla area,
uniting the country. Late in the century the Liao of Manchuria began to
threaten the Koreans, just as they had the Chinese, and this was only the
first of many invasions that occurred in the next several centuries. In this
adversity the Koreans turned to Buddhism and built many temples. The
ceramics of this period are perhaps the finest expression of Korean art.
Chinese acupuncture had spread to Korea by the end of this century. (Ref.
173, 45, 125)

SOUTHEAST ASIA

After 15000 years the Vietnamese rebelled against the Chinese Sungs in the
Red River Delta and gained independence as Dai Viet, or Annam, which is
presently North Vietnam. Although traditionally hostile to the Chinese,
these people absorbed much of the Chinese character, copied Chinese
industrial and agricultural techniques and followed the Confucian political
ethic. In Thailand, the Dvaravati continued in power and the great

Khmer Empire carried on in Cambodia with Yasovarman I proceeding with
the fabulous construction projects, including a reservoir some five square
miles in size and a stone pyramid to honor himself. (Ref. 8, 176)

In Java there was a shift of the cultural center to the eastern part of the
island and this situation was to continue for the next five centuries. The
great Buddhist temple of Borobudur in the center of Java, however,
continued to inspire its followers. (Ref. 286) There was no significant
change in Sumatra from the last century.

Southeast Asia's medical systems were a mixture of Chinese, Indian and
Arabic disciplines. The Arabic influence, coming in part from the Greeks,
showed up in the four humors (phlegm, blood, bile and wind) whereas
Indian concepts were seen in the placement of the soul in the spinal column
and instruction in methods of breathing. (Ref. 19, 125)

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The Far East: A.D. 1001 to 1100

THE FAR EAST

Back to The Far East: A.D. 901 to 1000

CHINA AND MANCHURIA (Sung Dynasty)

The Northern Sung capital, Kaifeng, is said to have had over 50 theaters,
some large enough for several thousand patrons, entertained by acrobats,
dancers, clowns, musicians and actors. China, in this century, was the most
populous, prosperous and cultured nation on earth. A new invasion in the
northwest by Uigurs in A.D. 1035 and the rise of a Western Xia Dynasty
(1032-1227) apparently did little damage to the main area of China, but
they did cut off Dunhuany completely from the mainstream of Chinese
culture.

(Ref. 282)

After A.D. 1000 Neo-Confucianism, having absorbed important elements
from Buddhism and Taoism, emerged unchallenged as the official
intellectual system of China. This was a victory for the gentry as against the
mercantile and military intruders, although industry continued to thrive.
One of the greatest Sung advances was the introduction of the Champa rice,
a new strain more drought resistant and faster ripening than previous
varieties| footnote]. Even then, however, the southern Chinese never
attempted to conquer the mountain regions. With insufficient draft animals
the wretched mountain-dwellers grew rice on dry land and did not
participate in the low-lander peasant prosperity. (Ref. 260)

In later centuries this was to be reduced to 30 days, through seed breeding.
(Ref. 101)

Hundreds of workmen in the Kaifeng region were employed in large scale
coal and iron complexes, accounting for about 1/2 of the country's total iron
production. One huge complex at Ch'its'un in Hopei had 700 coal miners,
1,000 ore miners and 1,000 blast furnace workers, producing annually some

42,000 tons of coal and over 14,000 tons of pig iron. The national total iron
production was 125,000 tons a year, by A.D. 1078. (Ref. 279) Although the
principal of the blast furnaces had been known in China for 1,000 years, it
was the use of coke in the early decades of this 11th century which solved
not only the fuel shortage but greatly improved the iron and steel
production. Canals connected the capital, Kaifeng, with Honan and Hopei
and it became a vast market for the iron and steel. But the government
continued to closely supervise the minting of coins (made from iron) and
the manufacture of weapons and agricultural implements after 1083 with
carefully controlled directives and taxation. A rising population meant that
poverty did not disappear even in the face of the rising production, with the
old story of "the rich got richer and the poor got poorer". (Ref. 279) It is one
of the main hypotheses of the historian, William H. McNeill's recent book
Pursuit of Power (Ref. 279) that China's rapid start toward industrialization
and rapid change towards a market-regulated (as opposed to a "command"
society) behavior in this and the next few centuries tipped a critical balance
in world history. While politicians found it less and less possible to escape
the effects of the financial market interchange, new forms of management
and compromise between rulers, military power and money power had to be
developed. (Ref. 101)

Paper currency was monopolized by the government in 1024. Movable type
was available in 1040 as the invention of Pi Cheng, but little use was made
of this and block type continued in use for a great profusion of literature.
The compass was invented in the late part of this century. Inoculation for
small-pox was accomplished by putting the crusts of pustules from active
cases into the nose, a process which may have come from India. (Ref. 101,
125, 213, 260)

The years of the administration of Wang An Shih, Socialist prime minister
as well as poet and writer, were from 1069 to 1076. He promoted regulation
of industry, made codes of wages and prices, nationalized commerce, had
State insurance against unemployment, poverty and old age and held
examinations for public office. Wang An Shih considered that the carrying
of arms was a disgrace, yet at the beginning of his term of office 80% of the
government income was needed to support the approximately 1,000,000
despised soldiers. (Ref. 279) As taxes increased and military requirements

expanded in order to repel northern invaders, opposition arose and finally
the emperor discharged this illustrious premier and all those socialistic
measures disappeared. (Ref. 46)

The main part of Manchuria, as well as adjacent Inner Mongolia, was ruled
throughout this century, as well as the previous one, by the Liao Dynasty of
the Khitan tribe. In the northwest another powerful kingdom, the Hsi-hsia,
was founded by the Tibetan Tanguts in Ninghsia and Kansu (now Gansu).
Both of these groups tended to raid the classical Chinese borders, but they
were kept pretty well in check by "brotherly gifts" from the Sung court of
large amounts of silver and bolts of silk[ footnote] Even then, punitive
campaigns had to be launched against the Tanguts in 1069 and again in
1081 - 1082. Sung China had a standing army of 1,250,000 by this time, but
the people were losing the will to fight. In the far north of eastern
Manchuria among the proto-Manchu Jurchen tribes, a new leader appeared
who was later to give China much trouble. This was Wan-yen a-Kuta
(1068-1123). His people were originally forest hunters in the mountains of
eastern Manchuria but they became tough cavalrymen whom both the
Khitans and the Koreans tried to hold back by constructing walls and
palisades. (Ref. 8, 101)

It is interesting to recall that at this same time the English were similarly
paying Danegeld to hold off the Danes

JAPAN

On the political front, this was the apex of the Fujiwara period. Michinaga's
rule over his clan and the state resulted in some of the most brilliant
decades of artistic and literary achievement, although there was much
turbulence among the monks with frequent marches upon the capital and
some actual fighting. In about 1080 the Minamoto clan in eastern and
northern Japan began to establish dominance. The island population was not
large enough to enable such killer diseases as measles to become endemic
childhood illnesses and serious, repeated epidemics of these held back
economic and cultural development of the islands. (Ref. 140)

KOREA

The greater part of this peninsula continued to be controlled by the kingdom
of Koryo. As mentioned above, the Koreans were threatened by the Jurchen
Manchurians and by 1044 the former had completed a great wall across the
northern border of their country to keep out the invaders. (Ref. 101)

SOUTHEAST ASIA

MAINLAND SOUTHEAST ASIA

Burma--In the first 1,000 years of the Christian era Indian forms of society,
religion and arts had been carried to Burma by traders and colonists, but in
this 11th century, having conquered and absorbed their non-Burmese
neighbors, including Mon, Shans, Karens and Arakanese, the Burmese
established their own kingdom which was to last 200 years.

King Anawratha introduced Buddhism, ruling from Pagan in upper Burma
on the Irrawaddy River, as the major political and artistic center. The
Burmese language was developed and Buddhist scriptures were translated
into this tongue. (Ref. 19, 175)

Thailand

This became a province of the great Khmer Empire of Cambodia in this
century. It was a river empire on the lower Mekong. (Ref. 19)

Angkor

The main Khmer kingdom continued toward the peak of its civilization
around Angkor. (Ref. 176)

Champa: Annam

This area, which is now North Viet Nam, became independent of China.
This was the source of early maturing rice which, when imported in China,
allowed the two harvests a year.

INDONESIA AND ADJACENT ISLANDS

Sumatra--Srivijuya was a prominent, Indianized state which was attacked
by the Cholas of southern India near the end of the century. Following this
attack their empire began to decline.

Java

In 1006 a disaster struck in the center of Java in the region of the great
temple of Borobudur. A devastating earthquake and the eruption of the
volcano Merapi covered the landscape and the temple with lava, ash and
land slides. The population fled, probably to the eastern part of the island
where Majapahit arose as another great Indianized state. The holy Buddhist
place was abandoned and forgotten for more than 800 years, with time and
weather and earthquakes taking their toll. (Ref. 286)

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THE FAR EAST

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CHINA AND MANCHURIA (Sung to 1127, then Southern Sung
Dynasty)

At this time there were perhaps 100,000,000 people in China. There was
notable development of maritime and rivertine trade and great cities arose
on the coast and along the Yangtze River, with merchant vessels going to
the Indian Ocean and South Asia. Cotton sails[footnote], adjustable center-
boards, larger vessels and the compass all contributed to this increased sea
activity. The mathematicians of China of this era may have been the best in
the world. Gun-powder was first used in war in 1161. (Ref. 46) Although
there was general prosperity paupers were not eliminated and impoverished
rural folks swarmed into towns hoping for work, even as has occurred
throughout the world many, many times since. Public relief activities were
begun in 1103 but were only partially successful and even in 1125 some
were still sleeping in the streets.

Cotton reached China from India in this century and spread extremely
rapidly. (Ref. 260)

The Tungusic speaking tribes of central Manchuria, the Jurchen, who were
the ancestors of the later Manchus, arose against their Khitan masters in
Manchuria in 1114 under the leadership of Wan-yen A-ku-ta, proclaimed
the Chin Dynasty[footnote] and aided by the Chinese Sung, destroyed the
Liao Empire as early as 1125, taking Peking in 1126. Then the Chin turned
on the Sung and conquered all of north China, leaving terrible devastation
behind them. The Jurchen had already gained access to Chinese artisan
skills and had improved armor and a greater supply of metal for weapons.
(Ref. 279) The northern Sung capital, Kaifeng, was soon brought under
siege and when that city ran out of supplies and the people had to turn to
cannibalism, the Sung government withdrew and headed south to what is

now known as Hangchow. For more than a decade Jurchen and Chinese
armies struggled for control of the Yangtze Valley. After 1127 the Chinese
dynasty was known as the "Southern Sung", who established their new
capital at Hangchow in 1138. They came to rely on specially designed
warships to guard against the Jurchen horsemen. These vessels included
armored ships driven by treadmills and paddle wheels, used particularly for
river and canal fighting. Crossbowmen, pikemen and projectile throwing
machines were mainstays; hundreds of ships and as many as 52,000 men
were used. (Ref. 279)

"Chin" here means "gold", as a symbolic name for the Jurchen Dynasty.
(Ref. 101)

In spite of continued political and military troubles Chinese economy and
culture flourished with new agricultural technology and productivity. The
south coastal regions were fully assimilated and populated by Chinese and
merchant ships from Southeast Asia and the Indian Ocean jammed the
coastal harbors. The mountainous topography south of the Yangtze hindered
the use of canals and riverways there so the merchants had to take to the
open seas. Commerce with other peoples could be subject to excise taxes
and by 1137 about 1/5 of the emperor's government income came from
those taxes on maritime trade. Hang-chow had a population in the millions.
Both block and movable type was used to promote printing and great
libraries were collected. The heavy military cost, the tributary payments
which had to be made to the Jurchen and heavy reliance on paper money
led to increasing inflation and increasing inequities between the rich and the
poor. (Ref. 45, 8, 68, 101)

Chu Hsi (1130-1200) saved Confucianism for the Chinese by building upon
the loose aphorisms of Confucius an orderly system of philosophy which
helped the political and intellectual life for the next seven centuries. In the
meantime the Jurchens had established the Chin (also Kin) Dynasty, with a
capital at Peking. (Ref. 46, 101)

JAPAN

An ex-emperor, Shirakawa, effective ruler for two children emperors, in
1126 decreed a strict Buddhist rule against killing any living thing and even
all fish-nets were collected and burned. (Ref. 222) But this was a feudal age
in Japan and local sources of authority grew in power as a distant
government failed to maintain security and order. The people paid taxes to
Shoguns, or generals, rather than to the central government. About 1192 a
member of the Minamoto clan, Yoritoma, getting his title of
Shogun[footnote] from the Emperor Go Toba, gathered an army and
established an independent military authority at Kamakura. For the next
several hundred years, although they never entirely ruled Japan, the
Shoguns held the balance of military power in the nation while the
emperors retained the spiritual powers. As indicated on page 530, in effect
the emperors were "shielded" from foreign eyes while still remaining
supreme in the final national decisions. Cultural activities continued and by
this 12th century Japanese lacquer had surpassed both Chinese and Korean.
By 1185 Kyotohad about 1,500,000 people, surpassed probably only by
Constantinople, Cordoba and possibly Hangchow.

The complete title was "Sei-i Dai Shogun", meaning "Great Barbarian-
suppressing General". (Ref. 12)

KOREA

The Jurchen Chin Dynasty of Manchuria forced the - Koryo kingdom of
Korea to submission early in the century. This affected the people as a
whole very little and there was no change then until 1170 when military
officers seized the government and condemned Buddhism, describing it as
dangerous. Some 26 years passed before the Ch'oe family could gain central
control again and establish a new native dynasty.

SOUTHEAST ASIA

Burma remained a fully sovereign state in its Pagan Period. Thailand
continued as part of the Khmer Empire which now reached its greatest
extent in Cambodia under Suryavarman II (1113-1150), who built the

temple tomb of Angkor Wat and extended the Angkor power from the
China Sea to the Indian Ocean. This great power and wealth was continued
under Jayavarman VII at the end of the century, even though in between
these two great leaders, considerable trouble had developed with a civil
uprising and a murderous invasion in 1170 by neighboring Chams, who
actually temporarily took Angkor. In Indonesia, Sumatra and Java remained
as separate entities, as in the last century. (Ref. 45, 176, 19, 176)

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The Far East: A.D. 1201 to 1300

THE FAR EAST

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CHINA AND MANCHURIA (Southern Sung to 1279, Yuan after 1264)

Before the Mongols hit China in this century it was more populous,
productive, wealthy, orderly and stable and had a more advanced science
and technology than contemporary Europe. It was the world's greatest
power and its culture the most splendid, with the Jurchen Chin, now
Sinicized considerably, ruling in the north and the Sung in the south.
Hangchow, at the height of the Southern Sung days, is said to have had a
population between 1,000,000 and 1,500,000, with 17 amusement districts,
including theaters with multiple tiers of balconies. Although coke was
probably known to the Chinese at this time, they did not utilize it, waiting
for England to do so five centuries later as the breakthrough inaugurating
the industrial revolution. They did have excellent steel, however, and China
was probably the original source of damask steel, as we have previously
intimated. (Ref. 260)

China bore the brunt of the Mongol invasion more than any other country. It
has been postulated that the gradual drying up of the regions behind the
northwestern frontier, making the desert incapable of supporting the hardy
Mongol population, had forced them, under their fiery leader Genghis
Khan, to win new fields. He had ridden some 1,200 miles across the Gobi
Desert and pierced the Great Wall of China, invading the independent Chin
Empire as early as 1211. Then, while preparing to invade Khwarizm, the
khan had left the eastern campaign against the Chin to Mukali. In this
conquest of northern China, the Mongols caused immense destruction.
Much of the land went out of cultivation, ninety some towns were left in
rubble and Peking burned for more than a month in 1215. When Mukali
died, the emperor of Chin signed a treaty with the Great Khan's impudent
vassal, the king of the Tibetan Tanguts of the imperial state of Hsi Hsia.

Later in the 1220s Genghis again personally started for China but decided
to liquidate the Tanguts on the way. When the Mongols reached the Tangut
stronghold at Ning-Hsia on the old China Wall, the old khan had actually
died enroute, but the gates were forced open and every living creature was
slaughtered. On the return to Mongolia Genghis was buried, along with 40
jewelled slave girls and 40 fine horses. (Ref. 8, 101, 137, 27)

Genghis Khan's successors, Ogedei, Mangku and Kublai in turn continued
aggression against the Southern Sung, with Kublai finally establishing the
Yuan[footnote] Dynasty of China in 1260[footnote]. Kublai is known in
Chinese history by his posthumous temple designation, Shih-tsu. The Sung
valiantly defended two walled cities in the Yangtze Valley, Hsiang-yang and
Fan-ch'eng, but the Mongols brought in siege specialists from the Near East
and with the help of a newly built navy conquered both in 1273 after 4 or 5
years of almost continuous siege. The Asians then surged through the south,
taking Hangchow in 1276. The khan and his family had no political need to
adopt the Toaist religion of their Chinese subjects because the latter took no
part in the high government and were treated as second class citizens,
forbidden to marry Mongols or learn their language. Kublai did not share
his grandfather's admiration for the Chinese learned Mandarins and his
ministers were Moslems, Nestorians or Buddhists from the western part of
the empire. If Kublai had any preference it was for the Shamanistic Tibetan
version of Buddhism. In 1260 the Lama 'Phags-pa, best remembered for
devising an alphabetic script for the Mongolian language, was named
Kublai's mentor and given viceregal authority in Tibet.

"Yuan" means "a beginning"

This date is from Chambers (Ref. 27) Others, such as The Times Atlas of
World History, (Ref. 8), state that this dynasty began at 1280 and Charles
Hucker (Ref. 101) gives 1264

For awhile Kublai Khan had as his "roving secretary of state" the Catholic,
Marco Polo, who was especially impressed with the size of the capital city,
Kanbalu (Peking) and with the road system which included the posting
stations, each having up to 400 horses. He estimated that the Great Khan
kept some 200,000 horses and 10,000 posts on the Silk Road. (Ref. 247)
The Khan insisted on imperial administration of the iron producing regions
of Hopei and Honan but by that time production had sunk from the previous

35,000 tons per annum down to about 8,000 tons and this was exclusively
consigned to equipping the Mongol armies with armor and weapons. Iron
production was not restored to its former level, in part because of vast
disasters to the canal system following an 1194 flooding of the Yellow
River, with subsequent establishment of a new path to the sea. The canals
were never restored. (Ref. 279)

At the time of Polo's visit to Hangchow, ships from the Indies brought
spices and left with Chinese silks. This was a metropolitan city with Arabs,
Persians and Christians and there were hotels, restaurants, taverns and tea
houses. Under the Yuan Dynasty, however, the country's productivity fell
and commerce was disrupted. In the countryside people ate snakes,
grasshoppers and rats. Southwestern China, the present Szechuan and
Yunnan, had a different people, cut off from the rest of the nation and there
Marco Polo[footnote] ate mutton, buffalo beef and poultry - raw. In far
western China at Jiayuguan, the mul- berry trees died of neglect as the Silk
Route had shifted to the north and for this and the next centuries, life in this
area was very harsh. In contrast, northern China still apparently grew much

See map of Marco Polo's journeys on page 753

In spite of many deficiencies, Kublai did promote many public projects,
patronized education, letters and arts, carried out many socialistic
measures|footnote], revised the calendar and promoted architecture to its
greatest height, but he never truly became Sinicized. When he died in 1294,
the titular supremacy of the Supreme Khan disappeared, but at its highest
point this far eastern Mongol Empire contained all of China, Korea, some
of Southeast Asia and Mongolia. (Ref. 46)

The source for this, Will Durant (Ref. 46), assumed that socialistic
measures were always good

As in India, metallic guns were in use in China by 1275. (Ref. 213)
Economic difficulties of this and the next century, inherent in the archaic
circulation of heavy caixas of copper or iron and the enlivened external
trade along the Silk Route, was partially solved by the use of paper money.
This not only facilitated internal payments between provinces but reserved
silver for trade with Central Asia and the West. (Ref. 260)

JAPAN

About 1200 Zen Buddhism arrived in Japan from China as an antagonist to
the ritualism and intellectualism of earlier sects. As the Kamakura Bakufu
Dynasty weakened, a rival family had set up the Hojo Regency in 1199,
ruling the Shoguns, who in turn "ruled" the emperors for the next 134 years.
In 1268, during the supremacy of the first shogun family, the Genji, envoys
from Kublai Khan arrived in Japan with a letter ordering that country to
submit to Mongol suzerainty or be invaded. The envoys were returned with
no answer, so Kublai ordered his vassal kings in Korea to construct a great
invasion fleet and for six years both nations prepared for the coming battle.
In 1274, 15,000 Mongols and 8,000 Koreans| footnote] sailed for southern
Japan, first attacking two small islands just off Kyushu. The Japanese
garrisons on the islands fought until the last man was dead. The invasion
fleet then landed at Hakata where the Japanese fought a savage holding
action on the beaches, awaiting reinforcements from central Kyushu. When
a severe storm came that night, sinking 200 ships, the Mongol generals,
who had already lost 13,000 of their 23,000 men, had an excuse to retreat to
Korea. Kublai Khan was not about to give up, however, and in the
following year he again sent envoys to Japan demanding surrender. This
time the envoys heads were cut off, in the charming manner often seen in
those times. Kublai was busy advancing into south China at the moment, so
it was another six years before he returned to launch his next attack on
Japan. In the meantime the Japanese had built hundreds of firefly boats to
harass the Chinese war junks and had constructed a stone wall more than
100 miles long and 2,5 meters high with which to contain the most likely
beachheads in Hakata Bay. In 1281 Kublai impressed all the junks of
Canton and Korea and sent 4,400 ships and an army of 142,000
troops|footnote], including 40,000 of his own Mongols, landing them in
greatest strength at the two ends of the stone wall in Hakata Bay. There was
desperate hand to hand battle for 53 days before a hurricane Kamikaze, "the
divine wind", arrived to almost destroy the N,ongol fleet over a 48 hour
period. Only perhaps one-half of the 140,000 Chinese and Mongols
returned to the mainland. Some estimates give 4,000 ships sunk and
100,000 casualties. The Mongols never threatened Japan again.

These are Bergamini's figures. (Ref. 12) Mozai (Ref. 278) says there were
40,000 men in 900 ships

This represents about 34 times as many ships and 5 times as many men as
in the famous Spanish Armada

Only in this century did Japan's population become great enough to allow
the threshold to be crossed from epidemic to endemic disease, so that
measles and small-pox became "children's diseases". The dynamic growth
occurred with the population jumping from 4,410,000 about A.D. 1000 to
9,750,000 by about A.D. 1200. (Ref. 140)

KOREA

After the Mongols had conquered the Chin on the northern Chinese
mainland, they reached Korea by 1235 and through intermarriage, the
Koryo kings became merely a branch of the Mongol imperial family. This,
and the rise of Confucianismn, led to acceptance of Chinese leadership in
political and cultural matters. Mongol influence remained until well into the
middle of the next century. (Ref. 27, 64, 175)

SOUTHEAST ASIA

In Burma, Ava developed on the upper Irrawaddy, Toungoo on the Sittang
and Pegu became the capital of anew Mon kingdom of the south. All of
these were Theravada

Buddhist areas and they had stupas, not temples, as places of worship.
Ancestors of the modern Thai entered the country from Yunnan and
founded dynasties with capitals at Cheingmae and Ayuthia (near modern
Bangkok). By the end of the century Buddhist monks from Ceylon had
converted the Thai and there resulted Buddhist art and ceramics, with a
marked preference for a green glaze, imitating the famous Chinese celadon.
(Ref. 19)

We noted in the last chapter that the Chams had taken over Angkor, but
Jayavarman VII, although already in his 50s, launched a merciless counter-
attack and drove them out, allowing him then to continue to build Angkor's

royal city complex. He rebuilt Angkor Thom as his own royal capital and
added 10 miles to the original walls of the city as well as constructing many
monuments and temples in all the cities of his empire. He also ordered 102
hospitals and 121 hostelries built along the hundreds of miles of highways.
Jayavarman VII died about 1219 and from then on no Khmer king
undertook such projects and the dynasty actually went into decline. Many
social and economic factors contributed to this weakness, including the
gradual migration of the Thais and Vietnamese southward out of the Khmer
sphere of influence. The capital city, however, maintained its magnificence.
(Ref. 176) Phnom Penh was developed on the Mekong in this century. After
Mongol attacks, Burma, Siam, Annan and Champa all accepted vassal
status to the Yuan Dynasty.

One Mongol expedition, using a rebuilt navy, even hit Java in 1292 and
1293, but no settlements were made and they did not establish enduring
control over the island. They did help a son-in-law of a recently killed king
of the Srivijaya Dynasty put down the rebel murderers, but then the
Mongols themselves were trapped and the son-in-law, Vijaya, started a new
dynasty with a capital at Majapahit. This Hindu empire ruled a large part of
present day Indonesia from 1291 to 1513, although Islam was already being
brought to Sumatra by Arab traders. (Ref. 101, 8, 175, 279)

The use of metallic guns drifted into southeast Asia at the end of the
century from India and China, so that it is possible that Philippinos saw
gun-fire before Frenchmen did. (Ref. 213)

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CHINA AND MANCHURIA (Yuan Dynasty to 1368, then Ming)

By the beginning of this century the use of moveable, wooden characters
for printing had become widespread in China and had even spread to -
Turkestan. (Ref. 260) In the early decades as much grain was carried in
seagoing vessels as moved on the canals, in part because improvement of
navigation techniques shortened the sea trip along the coast. The use of
great rafts began at this time with tree trunks tied together with a type of
wicker rope to bring wood from Szechwan down to Peking. For the open
sea they had large, four-deck junks with water-tight compartments, four to
six masts carrying up to 12 large sails and manned by about 1,000 men.
Local rebellions and sea piracy soon became problems that interfered with
long distance shipping, however, and even before the collapse of the
Mongol Dynasty sea shipments had become markedly reduced. (Ref. 260,
279) The use of the Chinese abacus for calculations and the Indian decimal
system had already traveled to the western world across the southern seas
and had helped to stimulate trade.

The Yuan (Mongol) Dynasty faltered as the Mongols lost power in Europe
and western Asia. The bubonic plague spread eastward, also, so that in 1331
9/10 of the population of Hopei died and between 1353 and 1354 perhaps
2/3 of the entire population of China expired. This, combined with civil war
occurring as the Mongols were beginning to be overthrown after 1335,
along with disastrous floods in the eastern plains from 1254 to 1359,
wrecked havoc on China's population and it dropped from 123 million
about A.D. 1,200 to 65 million in 1393. The revolt against the Yuan rulers
was led in 1368 by an ex-Buddhist monk, Chu Yuan-chang, who burned the
great Mongol center at Karakorum in the Gobi desert and entered Nanking
in triumph, proclaiming himself the first emperor of the Ming or Brilliant

Dynasty. It was not until 1387-8 that all of China was conquered and the
Mongols were finally completely defeated. The use of cannon by the Mings
helped in their victory. (Ref. 213, 260)

The Ming revised agriculture by rebuilding irrigation and drainage works
and carrying out reforestation projects so that another period of prosperity
developed by the end of the century. By 1380 the population of the south
was 21/2 times that of the north, because of rice cultivation, with 2 or 3
harvests a year. (Ref. 260) At first the Ming had an aggressive foreign
policy, with campaigns against the Mongols in the far north and- the
restoration of Korea to vassal status. (1369). The Ming also rebuilt the navy.
A Chinese ship of that period, now being recovered from under water near
South Korea, reveals a three-masted junk with squared off ends, flat bottom
without keel and bulk heads dividing the ship into compartments. The ship
had many treasures, including porcelain, lacquer ware and bronze and iron

Chaulmoogra Oil was used for leprosy in this century, but even the Chinese
seemed to find no solution for the plague. Tuberculosis may have occurred
and venereal disease, although not well defined, was present and treated
with a variety of therapies, including metals. (Ref. 12, 125)

JAPAN

After their victory over the Mongols, which was detailed in the last chapter,
the Japanese fought among themselves and the role of the Shoguns in
Kamakura deteriorated. In 1333 the Hojos power came to an end as Go
Daigo got the rival Minamoto and Ashikaga clans rallied to him to defeat
the degenerated Hojos and make him emperor. The Ashikagas then turned
on Go Daigo, however, and established their own puppet emperor, Kogon,
organizing the Ashikaga Shogunate which was to rule for 250 years of
chaos and civil war. In this period in Japan, skill at arms, rather than family
pedigree, was the best way to win and hold land.

There were two imperial courts from 1339 to 1392, a southern and a
northern one. True Shintoists considered the former to be the true court

because it had the imperial regalia - the mirror, sword and necklace.
Actually, by the rules of primogeniture, the northerners had the better claim,
but in 1392 they accepted a big financial settlement and ended the schism
by returning to Kyoto. But settling the schism brought no lasting peace and
civil wars raged on continuously in the next century. (Ref. 12)

KOREA

Surviving a short period of Mongolian overlordship, the Koryo Dynasty
continued through most of this century as in the previous one, subject,
however, to Ming overlordship after 1369. In 1392 General Yi Song-gye,
with the help of the Mings, overthrew the Koryos and took over the throne
in Songdo (Kaesong), which is now in North Korea. He then changed his
capital to Hansong (present day Seoul) and ruled as king of the Yi Dynasty,
one which was to dominate Korea for the next 500 years. Yi Song-gye later
became known as King Taejo, which means "great original ancestor". This
new dynasty rejected Buddhism in favor of Chinese Confucianism. (Ref.
113, 45)

SOUTHEAST ASIA

In the area of Burma several independent states emerged - the Burmese
proper about Ava in the north and Mons about the city of Pegu in the south,
but other peoples were evolving slowly, also. In Siam, the Thai political
center moved south to Aijutthaya about 1350 and formed the modern state
of Thailand. The Thai converted to Buddhism, but the Moslems won the
coasts. The Khmers now had abandoned Ankor and retreated to the
Mekong. Pagan declined after the Mongol invasion and Shan princes
assumed rule over the northern portions. The Shans were Theravada
Buddhists who lived with a distinctive structure of feudal states. The men
wore turbans and were of ten heavily tattooed. In Vietnam, the Chinese lost
their hold and a new kingdom, Dai-Viet, appeared and absorbed the
Kingdom of Champa. (Ref. 175)

Islam had pretty well won the contest of religions in the southern island
empires. On Sumatra, Malacca took the place of Srivijaya and Islam began
to spread into the archipelago to be halted only two centuries later by the
Spanish seizure of Manila. The Empire of Majapahit continued as the
greatest of the Indo-Javanese kingdoms and Arabs and Persians came there
to trade. The Malays, who settled the peninsula named after them, came in
this century from Sumatra. (Ref. 8)

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CHINA AND MANCHURIA (Ming Dynasty)

In 1428 the Ming Empire was divided into thirteen provinces, plus the two
metropolitan areas of Peking and Nanking. China's canal system was
enlarged and nothing in the world equaled China's internal water traffic and
trade. Eventually some of the river rafts were three miles long, able to
ingeniously fold so as to make the bends in the rivers. (Ref. 260)
Fortunately the invention and construction of deep water locks throughout
the length of the Grand Canal allowed the use of that canal 12 months a
year, without having to worry about high and low water periods. (Ref. 279)

In addition, great maritime expeditions established Chinese hegemony over
the key commercial centers of the Indian Ocean, the Malacca straits,
Ceylon, Calicut and less definitely at the Persian Gulf. By 1420 the navy
was comprised of at least 3,800 ships of which 1,350 were fighting vessels,
including 400 large floating fortresses. (Ref. 279) Between 1405 and 1433 a
Chinese Admiral Cheng-ho, actually a Moslem eunuch, had made seven
voyages into the Indian Ocean, bringing back objects from Java, Ceylon
and even East Africa. He had 62 ships, the largest vessels probably
displacing about 1,500 tons[footnote] and carrying 28,000 men. Including
the expeditions under other leaders there were perhaps some 250 vessels
participating in the various overseas projects, all of which came to an abrupt
halt in 1434 when the emperor suddenly ordered the expeditions stopped
and prohibited any further ship construction. The result of this was delivery
of the China coast into the hands of the Japanese[ footnote] and Malay
pirates along with the Portuguese sailors. (Ref. 46, 8, 101, 260)

In comparison, Vasco da Gama's flagship displaced only 300 tons. (Ref.
279)

Although the Japanese were blamed, McNeill (Ref. 279) says that these
actually were chiefly Chinese merchant sailors who now had to make their
living illegally in this way.

Politically, Ming China was somewhat subdued, because of the previous
excesses of the Mongol Dynasty and some conscious social leveling
affected by the early Ming rulers.

The rich were humbled, slavery was abolished and the poor were pampered
with low rental, state land and gifts of seeds, tools and farm animals. China
received her horses from Asia, particularly through special frontier fairs in
Mongolia and Manchuria. (Ref. 260) Fairs were not seen in the number and
way that we met in Europe. When the nation was pretty well unified under
the Mings, the fairs almost -completely disappeared from the interior and
appeared only on the external frontiers, as noted regarding the horse fairs
near Manchuria. Occasionally a caravan would arrive from Moscow, setting
up fairs in Hanchu or Cheng Tun. (Ref. 292)

In the first half of the century metal characters for use as moveable type
were perfected (this may actually have been done in Korea) and these soon
became widely used for 50 years before the Gutenberg "invention".
Inflation, which had been occurring over several centuries, now reached the
point where 1,000 paper notes were required for 3 caixas of cash, so the
state abandoned the paper money and private banks put it out only for local
needs. As paper money disappeared, rice reappeared as a money substitute
for ex- change. (Ref. 260)

There was still intermittent warfare and civil uprisings. The third Ming
emperor, Ch'eng-tsu, came to power by overthrowing his nephew, after
three years of civil war, but he rebuilt Peking and reconstructed the silted-
up Grand Canal, thus allowing grain and textiles to come to the city from
the rich southeast. He bullied Japan into nominal vassalage for the first
time. In the middle of the century the emperor Ying-tsung (era name - Tien-
shun) was taken captive and his court slaughtered by a Mongol raider, Esen.
Rural problems also led to a number of rebellions, chiefly in the central and
southeastern China, leading to a million deaths. (Ref. 101, 8)

JAPAN

Although organization and administration was sometimes neglected and
chaotic, many of the dictators of the Ashikaga Shogunate were patrons of
the arts and collected pieces that are prizes of collectors today. Local rulers
of wide territories were called daimyos, meaning "feudal lords" and their
subordinate soldiery were samurai, a word originally simply meaning
"attendant". In the civil wars which raged throughout Japan, sometimes an
entire clan family would be killed off and then their remaining fighting
retainers would become masterless samurai or- ronin (wave-men). Some of
these became pirates, terrorizing the coast of China and even the
Philippines. (Ref. 12) In 1428, transport workers struck in protest against
high prices and they, backed by farmers, rioted in the streets and wrecked
warehouses, temples and houses. (Ref. 222)

Towns developed, eventually becoming the modern cities of Osaka, Kobe
and Fukuoka. Kyoto was the undisputed political and cultural capital. This
was still a thoroughly Buddhist age in Japan, but intellectual life began to
free itself from the bonds of religion. The Ashikaga power began to decline
early in the century and the Onin War (1467-77) began a hundred years of
strife between the feudal lords. (Ref. 119, 12)

KOREA

The new Yi Dynasty was dominated by the Chinese and there was a
suppression of Buddhism. Japanese pirate raids subsided somewhat and
Korea had a period of great prosperity and cultural development. King
Sejong (1419-1451) was a great patron of learning. It was at this time that
the native phonetic script called "Onmum" was introduced and it is possible
that the movable metal printing characters mentioned above were actually
developed in Korea. (Ref. 233, 260)

SOUTHEAST ASIA

The Chinese Ming occupied Annam (Vietnam), through their navy, from
1407 to 1427, but then met resistance and finally allowed the region its
independence in 1428. A Lao tribal monarch established the Laotian
Kingdom of Lan Xang in mid-century. This included present day Laos and
much of northern and eastern Thailand. The Siamese (Thai), under King
Trailok, had centralized bureaucracy and a codified system of law. They
ravaged Angkor in 1431 and took over a great part of the southern Khmer
Empire, leaving them only what is now the general area of Cambodia and
which was then called "Kambuja". After the sacking of Angkor the Siamese
went home with as much loot as they could carry and when they returned
for more a year later the city, where once there had been a million people,
was deserted. No one knows where the people went, but through neglect the
huge reservoirs, canals, roads and bridges all gave way to the jungle. (Ref.
8, 101, 176) Braudel (Ref. 260) says that the Siamese attacks upset the daily
life and agriculture so that the rice field water cleared, allowing the malaria
carrying mosquitoes to thrive and that the disease apparently decimated the
population.

Northern Burma was under the Shan power while southern Burma was
under the Mon (Pegu). The new Vietnamese kingdom of Dai-Viet gradually
absorbed Champa territory, annexing its capital, Vijaya, in 1471. (Ref. 8)

Since the Moluccas Islands and Malay, along with Ceylon, were the source
of almost all spices, Malacca became an international port, shipping to
China and the Malabar coast of India from where Arabs, Indians and
Persians took over for further distribution. Built in a dismal swamp almost
inaccessible by land, Malacca had been of no importance except as a pirate
storage headquarters until in this and the preceding century it became a port
for peaceable shipping. (Ref. 279) The men of Islam overthrew the old
Majapahit Empire and their religion, which had been introduced into the
Malayan archipelago from India in the 10th century, now finally became
dominant as the Hindus were driven to Bali and a few other islands. (Ref. 8,
68)

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The Far East: A.D. 1501 to 1600

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CHINA AND MANCHURIA (Continued Ming Dynasty)

The virulent form of syphilis, supposedly generated by the interaction of
Columbus' men and the Caribbean Indians, reached China about 1505. (Ref.
140, 260) The population about 1580 has been estimated at 130,000,000,
although drastic reduction occurred at the end of the century by plague.
New crops, including sorghum, sweet potato, maize, peanuts and Irish
potatoes were helping to feed the people. Commerce was stimulated by
silver from the new world, received in payment for extensive Chinese
exports of tea, silk and ceramics. By 1600 the state had converted almost all
its revenues to money in the form of silver. (Ref. 140, 8, 101) In contrast to
the West, China had no gradual rise of bourgeoisie as the nature of the state
almost prohibited this. A temporary exception might have occurred at the
end of this century in the development of the large iron works near Peking
and the private porcelain work shops of King-to-chen and the silk trade of
Su-Chu. This all stopped with the Manchu conquest in the next century.
(Ref. 260)

Throughout its history China has usually had a command economy with
prices and production centrally and rigidly controlled in one way or
another[footnote]. By making large scale private accumulation of capital
difficult or impossible, the pace of economic development and
technological innovation was markedly restricted. Thus in this century
while European countries were developing new, better and cheaper
weaponry, China held fast to large siege cannons and no one had the means
or motive for developing gunpowder weaponry in new directions. The
resulting lag behind European military and technological development cost
them dearly in the long run. (Ref. 279)

Even today this central command economy continues under the communist
regime and has resulted in extensive economic and social woes, as
explained by Fox Butterfield in China: Alive in the Bitter Sea (Ref. 280)

During the Ming Dynasty, about 1517, the Portuguese arrived at Canton
with their guns. Being little better than pirates the Chinese treated them as
such, although the foreigners did give some aid against other pirates. The
Chinese thus finally rewarded them in 1557 by allowing them to settle
Macao and to govern it. The Portuguese proceeded to build great opium
factories employing men, women and children, all of which brought
millions of dollars yearly to the Portuguese provincial government. They
were followed by the Spanish, who after taking the Philippines, moved over
to take the Chinese island of Formosa after 1571. The Dutch came still later.

It was probably in this century that the compilation of the Great Herbal in
52 volumes, with information about 1,200 herbs, was completed - an
authoritative work in China still today. There are many medical adaptations
from Chinese medicine in the western world, including iron for anemia,
castor oil, lanolin, camphor, chaulmoogra oil, ephedra vulgaris and a
method of inoculation with small pox matter for immunization against that
disease| footnote].

These materials all came from China, but not necessarily from this 16th
century

The Portuguese establishment at Macao, permanent by 1557, was only a
minor irritant, but at the same time China was under constant pressure from
a Mongol power under Altan Khan in the north and from attacks by
Japanese pirates along the coast. Huge armies also had to be sent to aid
Korea, when the Japanese invaded there. All of this coincided with a
decline in the authority of the Ming government, with power actually
passing — into the hands of the palace eunuchs| footnote], who, with their
own armies and secret police, were able to terrorize officials and populace
and extort heavy taxes. (Ref. 8)

Eunuchs, made so in China by complete removal of external genitalia, had
been used in the courts since ancient times. Ming emperors often had
offending officials flogged in open court, the eunuchs flaying bared
buttocks with wooden rods. (Ref. 101)

Jurchens of Manchuria were fairly well controlled by the Chinese
government until about 1580 when they fought back to again take complete
control of that country.

JAPAN

It was mentioned in the last chapter that many samurai turned pirate. By
1550 the kings of Burma, Siam and Cambodia all employed Japanese cut-
throats for their personal body guards and Japanese pirate traders were at
their height, even in Siamese, Philippine and Korean waters. In spite of
feudal, clan wars through the country the common people of Japan
prospered and the population rose from 15 to 25 million, a figure 2 times
that of France, 4 times that of Spain and 5 times that of England. The
artisan and merchant classes grew rich on war profits and traders did well
with lacquer and steel wares as far away as Calcutta. Some silver and
copper even went to Europe. At the same time, how- ever, the imperial
fortunes went down so that Emperor Go-Nara (1526-1557) even peddled
samples of his calligraphy on the Kyoto streets to regain a fortune. (Ref.
292, 12)

In 1542 the first Portuguese ship called at ports in Kyushu and by 1573 the
port of Sakai had become a free market and town. Soon powerful craft
guilds extended their networks and monopolies from one town to another.
In 1549 Francis Xavier, the great Jesuit, arrived and made 150,000 converts,
even including some of the great lords, to Christianity in a single
generation. Although closely watched, after two years Xavier extracted the
taboo information that there was an emperor in Japan above the Shogun, but
he never did see him and no westerner saw an emperor for yet another 300
years. The Portuguese had guns, of course, and it didn't take the Japanese
long to copy and then improve on the few which they bought from the
westerners. Japan had copper and got tin from Malaysia to make new
bronze cannon. (Ref. 12, 279)

Oda Nobunaga, of both imperial and Fujiwara lineage and ruler over a
small fief, including the port of Nagoya, was a military genius, who
defeated all the major clan lords between Tokyo and Kyoto by 1568, using

foot soldiers equipped with matchlocks. He deposed the Shogun and set up
a puppet in his place as he began to build the Emperor Ogimachi a
magnificent new palace. Then with the emperor 's sanction, he destroyed
various feuding barons and all but one Buddhist monastery in Japan. With
Christians he was lenient. In 1575, at 41 years of age, Oda met the lords of
the north coast at Narashino in the biggest battle of all - commanding
100,000 men with cannon and muskets. There was no battle in Europe to
compare with this for another century. Oda was finally assassinated but
during his career Kyoto had climbed from a population of 20,000 in 1550 to
almost 500,000.

His place as head of the army was taken immediately by the most talented
of his staff, Hideyoshi, son of a peasant foot soldier. He gave the emperor
allegiance and completed the unification of Japan. He was the one man in
Japanese history, up until 1945, who really ruled Japan and yet was outside
the pool of imperial blood. Small arms and cannon made the older forms of
fighting and fortification partially obsolete and facilitated the establishment
of a single, central authority. (Ref. 279, 12)

In 1592 Hideyoshi set out to conquer China, dispatching 205,000 men to
Pusan, but Korea was loyal at that time to China and many men were lost to
Korean ships during the crossing. Still, the main army was at the Yalu River
on China's border within 6 months, there to meet counter-attacks by more
than a million Chinese troops. After a 3 year stalemate, Hideyoshi sent a
second force and China sent another 2 million reinforcements. The war
ended when the Koreans demolished the Japanese supply fleet, as will be
detailed under KOREA, this chapter. Hideyoshi died in 1598 during peace
negotiations, but for sheer carnage Europe would see nothing like this until
Napoleon's campaign more than two centuries later. That Japanese general
was given the name "Taiko", meaning "Great Sovereign" a word which has
entered our own language as "tycoon". His invasion of Korea cost the lives
of 260,000 men and ruined the Japanese peasantry, because their crops had
been commandeered to feed the troops. (Ref. 12, 222) We should note here,
parenthetically, that carriages in Japan were normally pulled by Korean
oxen and horses were primarily reserved for nobles. (Ref. 260)

KOREA

After the cruel ruler Yonsangun was overthrown by rebels, Chunjong came
to the throne in 1507 and attempted to control the great families through the
use of Confucian scholars as ministers. This led to the development of
many bitterly antagonistic factions. With the decline of the Ming Dynasty in
China, near the end of the century, there was a similar political and cultural
decline in Korea. The Japanese invasions of 1592 to 1598 (See above)
completed the devastation and made Korea the "hermit kingdom" isolated
from the rest of the world. (Ref. 19, 113, 222)

The Japanese crossed most of Korea and reached the Yalu River on their
way to conquer China. They were held there by millions of Chinese troops,
but it was a canny Korean Admiral Yi, who destroyed the Japanese wooden
supply line ships by ramming them with the world's first iron clad ship,
which was painted to look like a fierce turtle. This was 250 years before the
Monitor and the Merrimac. The vessel was propelled by oar power and was
a most effective weapon against the frail Japanese boats. (Ref. 162)
Admiral Yi Sun-shin eventually made an entire fleet of "turtle boats", each
armor-plated with what was probably 3/8 inch wrought iron, cut in
hexagonal shapes and riveted together. Knives, spearheads and spikes were
attached to the plating to deter enemy boarding. In separate actions in 1592
and again later in 1597, Yi destroyed or captured nearly 500 Japanese ships,
with no Korean losses. (Ref. 11)

SOUTHEAST ASIA

CONTINENTAL SOUTHEAST ASIA

BURMA

At the beginning of the century the area of present day Burma consisted of

1. An Araken monarchy, with a capital at Mrohauing

2. Burmese Ava in the main Irrawaddy Valley, captured by the Shans in
1527 (Ref. 206)

3. Burmese Toungoo in the Sittany Valley

4. Mon Pegu on the Irrawaddy delta and Tenasserim

To the north and east of Ava were a number of Shan states, but after some
300 years of divided rule, the Toungoo Dynasty conquered both the Shans
and Mons in the middle of the century, making a united Burma. It then
began two centuries of expansion eastward into Siam.

THAILAND (SIAM)

A powerful Thai kingdom existed, controlling much of the eastern coast of
the Malay Peninsula. In the last half of the century tin was exported to
Europe to supplement the Cornish tin mines. (Ref. 292)

LAOS

The Laos kingdom of Luany Prabang stretched along the upper and middle
Mekong.

MALAY PENINSULA

The eastern coast was controlled by the Siamese while Malacca, on the
west, had been conquered in 1511 by the Portuguese, who then controlled
the spice and tin trade of the world. Had the remaining Malay states united
they might have been able to drive out the invading Portuguese, but they
fought against one another, instead. (Ref. 140) When the value of bronze
artillery became known to the rulers of India, China and Japan, Malayan tin
became critically important. (Ref. 279)

INDONESIA AND ADJACENT ISLANDS

Portugal also had stations on Java and Borneo to further consolidate their
far eastern trade. In "greater" Java the chief town was Bantam, even for
some time after the Dutch built Batavia, in 1619. Bantam was on the
northwest tip of the island, surrounded by swamps, with red brick walls and
cannon. Three streets leading away from the royal palace were filled with
vendors of poultry, parrots, fish, meat, hot cakes, silks, thread, precious
stones and what-not. But to the east of the city there was a square where
large scale merchants, investors and shippers met. The Chinese played a
large role in this gathering, of ten buying up produce for months before the
trading ships from the west could arrive on the monsoon winds. (Ref. 292)
By the end of the century the Dutch were making their appearance by
setting up a factory on Sumatra. The Spaniards had established themselves
in the Philippines with a capital at Manila by 1571 after the islands had first
been "discovered" by Magellan[footnote] in 1521. The-Spanish exchanged
Mexican silver for Chinese silk with galleons sailing back and forth from
Acapulco to Manilla quite regularly after 1572. (Ref. 292) The Muslim
states on Mindanao retained their independence from Spain for another
three centuries. (Ref. 153, 8)

Magellan was killed on the Philippine island of Cebu in 1521 and of his
original 5 ships only 2 made it to the Moluccas and only 18 of the original
sailors got back to Seville. (Ref. 222) Additional Notes

Except for the island of Bali, the Islamic faith had completely replaced
Hinduism and Buddhism in Indonesia by the end of the century and the old
Majapahit Kingdom was broken up into a number of small, weak Muslim
States, no match for the invading Europeans. (Ref. 175)

Note:Ferdinand Magellan was a Portuguese, but was despised by King
Manuel I, so he went to work for Spain, under Emperor Charles V. On his
around the world trip his men had no fresh food for almost 4 months and
there was terrible morbidity and death from scurvy. (Ref. 302) (In
Portuguese - Fernao Magalhaes) (Ref. 317)

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The Far East: A.D. 1601 to 1700

THE FAR EAST

Back to The Far East: A.D. 1501 to 1600

CHINA AND MANCHURIA (Ming Dynasty to 1644, then Ch'ing
[Manchu])

The Ming government reached its lowest point early in the century when
the young, indecisive emperor, Hsi-Tsung, gave dictatorial power to Wei
Chung-hsien, the most notorious palace eunuch of all Chinese history. He
proceeded to brutally purge the government of all dissidents. In the first
decades of the century the Jurchens, originally called Kin and now called
"Manchus" gradually expanded into the modern provinces of Liaoning and
Kirin and established a first capital at Mukden (subsequently Shenyang)
from 1625 to 1644. The Manchus owed their nationhood to Nurhachi and
his son Abahai, starting as petty tribal chieftains selling medicinal herbs to
Chinese settlers in Manchuria. Abahai ended as the strong emperor at
Mukden. (Ref. 101) From this base the Manchus subdued inner Mongolia in
1629 and made Korea a vassal state in 1637. At about the same time the
Russian advance to the Pacific was stopped as these Manchurian people
confronted them at the Amur River. The Manchus then headed south to
China, where the population at 1600 was about 150 million or 2 1/2 times
as great as it had been in 1368. Braudell (Ref. 260) points out that the early
settlement and precipitous rise in population were-possible because of the
small amount of meat eaten. When one adds up calories available for
human consumption, agriculture on a given amount of land will always
have the advantage over stock raising, feeding from 10 to 20 times as many
people. "The choice between cereals and meat depends on the number of
people."[footnote] Early 17th century warfare reduced the total population
drastically, however, as after 1627 there were waves of rebellions following
crop failures in the northwest. Disastrous droughts and plagues of locusts
were among the natural disasters occurring and paralleling those in the
France of Louis XIII.

Quotation from page 104, Braudel (Ref. 260) But also see next page re:
protein deficiencies

The basic crop of China, of course, was rice, but occasionally a peasant
could get in a wheat crop between his 2 yearly harvests of rice. The Chinese
made a sort of heavy dough from the wheat, not knowing how to knead it
and so it helped very little in their meager dietary supply. (Ref. 260) On the
other hand, China had plenty of highly skilled artisans. The cotton works of
Songjiang, south of Shanghai, employed 200,000 workers, not including
tailoring and dressmaking, by the end of the century. Su-chi had between
3,000 and 4,000 silk-looms. (Ref. 292) Still by 1636 almost all of central,
northern and northwestern China was in rebellion. In that same year 3
Portuguese cannon, hauled upon the Great Wall, put the Manchurian army
to flight and gained another decade of life for the Ming Dynasty. Rebel
leader Li Tzu-ch'eng from Honan and adjacent areas, took Peking in 1644
in spite of its wide, guarded walls. The last Ming emperor then committed
suicide. We should note in passing that Peking participates in the cruel
Siberian cold for 6 months of the year and thousands of Mandarins clothed
themselves in expensive sable and had boots, saddles, chairs and tents made
with those same skins. (Ref. 260)

Li, as the conqueror of Peking, never got to form a dynasty because of the
almost immediate invasion of the Manchus, who came down from Liao-
tung with the aid of some Chinese defectors. (Ref. 68) Driven south, the
remnants of the Ming eventually occupied Taiwan (never previously under
Chinese control) in 1662, wresting it from the Dutch and they remained
there until 1683. These new Formosans, led particularly by Cheong Ch'eng-
kung[footnote], pirated the mainland coast to such a degree that the Manchu
regime made the populations within 10 miles of the coast move inland, to
escape the raids. (Ref. 222) Some Ming also lived in Guilin (not far from
Canton) and Jesuits, who accompanied the court, converted most of the
remaining royal household to Christianity. Even the governor and
commanding general of the Ming forces became Christians, chiefly through
the efforts of the Italian Jesuit Rica, the German von Bell and the Belgian F.
Verbiest. (Ref. 69, 101) Mings, forming the "Rebellion of the Three
Feudatories", dominated almost all of south China for about 8 years, finally

being suppressed by Chinese generals serving the Manchu Dynasty. (Ref.
101)
The Europeans called him "Kalinga". (Ref. 222)

The Mongolians and Manchurians of the eastern steppe apparently learned
to protect themselves against plague and it was this that allowed their
populations and vigor to be augmented to the point that the Manchu could
conquer China. (Ref. 140) Some might argue that their habit of eating meat
in large slices (as the Mongols before them) might also have contributed. In
China proper meat was rare (and thus their proteins deficient?). At any rate,
the Manchus set up their own Ch'ing Dynasty which was to rule China until
the 20th century. It was these foreign rulers who obliged the native Chinese
to wear the Manchu pigtails as a mark of submission. The large robe, of
former times, was also altered, but this did not amount to much and
otherwise there was basically very little change. (Ref. 260) The invaders
forbade intermarriage with the natives, but soon these conquerors, too,
became "Chinese". The second ruler of the dynasty, K'ang-hsi, gave China
the most prosperous, peaceful and enlightened reign in the nation's history.
His realm, which included Mongolia, Manchuria, Korea, Indo-China,
Annam, Tibet and Turkestan was the largest, richest and most populous
empire of its time. His rule was more wise and just that that of his
contemporaries, Aurangzeb and Louis XIV. All the emperors of the Ch'ing
Dynasty lived in magnificent style. When Father Verbiest traveled with the
emperor in Manchuria in 1682, the retinue was accompanied by 100,000
horses and in a hunt, 1,000 stags and 60 tigers were killed in 1 day. The
Manchus were tough and smart. In 1689 when a final treaty was signed
with the Russians at Nerchinsk, officially giving the Amur River basin back
to China, the city was surrounded by a large fleet of heavily armed junks
and 17,000 Manchu soldiers. (Ref. 131)

By the end of the century the population had again risen and stood at about
130 million. (Ref. 260) The Chinese did not give a monetary value to gold
and would exchange it for silver at exceptionally low rates. Some historians
believe that from 1/3 to 1/2 the silver mined in America between 1527 and
1821 found its way to China. Braudel (Ref. 292) states that in 1695 a
traveler reported profits of 300% were made taking Chinese mercury to
New Spain.

JAPAN

We have noted that as the last century closed the Japanese hero of the
bloody Korean-Japanese conflict, Hideyoshi, died during the peace
negotiation. As this 17th century began, Tokugawa leyasu, of royal blood,
fought his rival generals and became the new shogun and brought order out
of chaos by establishing a new currency, a money rather than a rice
economy, a police network of the unemployed samurai and ruled as tyrant,
while still giving young Emperor Go-Yozei some of the taxes. At the
emperor's request Tokugawa issued an edict ordering the deportation of
foreign priests, the demolition of churches and the renunciation of faith by
Christians "who seek to change the government and obtain possession of
the land". Still, in the first decade of the century Japan was a profitable
rendezvous f or Portuguese traders. Every year the Macao carrack brought
about 200 merchants to Nagasaki, where they would stay for 7 or 8 months,
spending money freely. (Ref. 292) When Tokugawa sought to evacuate the
Portuguese and Spanish friars, he was influenced by Will Adams, an
English pilot of a Dutch ship, whom the shogun had kept as a prisoner but
finally had him build 2 European ships. For this Adams was made a
Samurai and given an estate. Although against Portuguese and Spanish
aggression, Tokugawa was not against all Christians and did not want to
stop profitable trade with Protestants from Holland and England. But after
his death in 1616[footnote], Catholic Christians were further persecuted and
between 1620 and 1635 some 6,000 were crucified, some of them upside
down like St. Peter. By that time 1 out of every 50 Japanese had been
converted to Christianity and there were some Christian clan lords with
armed infantry. The Emperor G-Mizu-no-o felt that his shogun was not
doing his job of expelling those Christians, so he abdicated in 1629, putting
a 7 year old girl on the throne, the first empress since 769. That was a sign
to all that the Tokugawas were infringing on the imperial power and were
fit to manage no one but little girls. Soon the shogun went to Kyoto to
parley, with a great show of pomp and power, taking 307,000 retainers.
After the meeting the shogun clamped down on all foreigners and closed
the country except for a small Dutch trading post on a tiny island in
Nagasaki harbor. Every time a Dutch or Chinese vessel did arrive there "on
permission" a kind of fair was held and in the exchange Japan could export
its silver and copper. Thus Japan still had some impact on world economy.

It was the merchants of Osaka who were in charge of the internal trade.
Japan would not be open again for 211 years. (Ref. 12, 292)

Tokugawa's heirs ran the administration of Japan for the hidden emperors
for the next 252 years. (Ref. 12)

In 1657 fire destroyed most of Edo and killed more than 100,000 Japanese.
(Ref. 222) The shoguns of the late part of the century were on the whole
only mediocre. The so-called Genroku Age of letters and art developed
between 1688 and 1703. During this time of isolation from the rest of the
world, Japan kept her population stable by various devices, chiefly
infanticide. Although rice had been grown some since the 1st century of the
Christian Era, it was only in this century that it began to play a large part in
the Japanese diet. Yedo (also Edo and later to become Tokyo) began to be
the largest city, with over 500,000 citizens plus an enormous garrison of
soldiers, with their families. The old capital of Kyoto sunk to second place.
Merchant dynasties became established and some such as the Mitsui family
have survived until today. They were sake manufacturers in 1620 and
became the financial agent of both the shogun and of the imperial
household in 1690. (Ref. 260, 292)

KOREA

Following the great war with Japan, in which the Koreans defeated the
invading Japanese by cutting their supply lines at sea, Injo was put on the
throne by the so-called "southern faction" of Confucianists. In 1637,
however, the Manchus overran Korea and within 10 years it was simply a
vassal state of the Manchu Ch'ing Dynasty and, isolated from the non-
Chinese world, became known as "The Hermit Kingdom". The court and
the people remained loyal to the Ming and in the last quarter of the century
the western faction of Confucianists returned to power, under Sukchong.

SOUTHEAST ASIA

Under the Ming Dynasty of China there was a kind of colonial capitalism
among the emigrant Chinese to the East Indies. This has persisted to the
present day, with Chinese merchants and bankers among the most
prominent of the entire Southeast Asia region. (Ref. 292)

MAINLAND SOUTHEAST ASIA

After 1644 much of Indo-China and all of Annam became part of the
Manchu Chinese Empire. Towns in Vietnam were little populated on
ordinary days as the people were in the fields, but twice a month great
markets were held. At Hanoi (then Ke-Cho) the merchants were grouped on
different streets according to their specialties. In effect it was a fair or
market rather than a town. (Ref. 260) In 1659 Vietnamese armies penetrated
Cambodian territory and in 1697 LanXang split into three rival states and
wrangled among themselves for 2 centuries, while f ighting off outside
invaders at the same time. Burma had broken up into a number of small
states at the beginning of the century. Japanese, Portuguese and English
traders were all active in Siam, along with the ever present Dutch. The
European powers also traded in Burma and Malaysia early in the century.
When the Dutch attempted to monopolize Siam's foreign trade, King Narai
(1661-88) and his Greek adviser, Constant Phaulkon, invoked French aid
and the resulting French garrisons at Bangkok and Mergui led both to a
change of dynasty at Ayurthaya and complete expulsion of the French, with
heavy losses. (Ref. 175, 8)

After the Dutch seized Amaboyna and established themselves at Batavia,
the English withdrew from Malaysia, as the Dutch had also captured
Malacca from the Portuguese. The latter had introduced pineapples, papaya
and sweet potatoes to southeast Asia from America. With Chinese-
influenced Vietnam as an exception, houses in southeast Asia were built on
piles and made of wood and bamboo, with wood and mud lattices. (Ref.
211, 260)

INDONESIA AND ADJACENT ISLANDS

In the course of this century the Dutch East India Company, by both force
and diplomacy, got control of the sources of almost all the valuable spices
coming from this part of the world and thus established a virtual monopoly
on their shipment to Europe.

Besides their headquarters at Batavia and Malacca, they had a large
establishment at Goa to service the Indies' activities. (Ref. 8) Sumatrans, as
other far easterners, were basically grain eaters. Only a great lord might
have chicken and they could not understand the Westerners love of cattle
and poultry. Spanish galleons linked America with Manila, where Chinese
junks hurried to trade. Mexican silver in the amount of about a million
pesos a year thus went to the Orient. (Ref. 260) Timor, out at the eastern
end of the lower island chain, was held by the Dutch East India Company
because of its sandalwood, which could be used as an exchange currency in
China. (Ref. 292)

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CON DMDUBRWN FE

The Far East: A.D. 1701 to 1800

THE FAR EAST

Back to The Far East: A.D. 1601 to 1700

CHINA AND MANCHURIA

The K' and Hsi reign of Sheng Tsu of the Ch'ing or Manchu Dynasty
continued until 1722 as a period of great cultural achievement. Then there
was a Short reign of Shih Tsung in the Yung Cheng period, which included
inconclusive wars against Mongols and western tribesmen. Finally in 1736
Kao Tsung became the Ch'ien Lung Emperor to reign for almost the rest of
the century. He was an able and learned man, but he kept the western world
away from China by repulsing English attempts at increasing international
trade. (Ref. 101) Imperial domination of that type had controlled the
economy and general course of industry for many generations and the end
result of- that could be seen by 1736 when the once busy blast furnaces,
coke ovens and steel plants were abandoned entirely. These basic industries,
which later led to the Industrial Revolution in Europe, came to a dead end
in China as a direct result of the absence of a free market economy.
Officials habitually distrusted successful entrepreneurs and a going
enterprise was either taken over as a state monopoly or was subjected to
such taxes and artificially imposed prices that continued successful
operation was impossible. One exception to this situation appears in the Co-
Hong, a group of merchants authorized by the Peking government in 1726
to set up in competition with the Europeans, particularly the Indies
Company. Lasting until 1771, the Co-Hong was the source of some huge
Chinese fortunes. (Ref. 292)

Jesuit missionaries had been active in China for a long period and in order
to get better rapport with the people, they had compromised with some
Chinese customs and belief s. This upset the pope and he banned the Jesuit
activity in China and eventually disbanded the whole order. But the pope's
action infuriated the Chinese emperor and he promptly banned all

missionary activities, although Priests were allowed to stay in Peking as
astronomers, calendar makers and engineers. Increasing isolation behind
monastic walls caused Chinese Buddhism to fade gradually in importance
and Confucianism dominated. European intellectuals marveled at a great,
prosperous and powerful country without benefit of clergy or hereditary
aristocracy. This was one of China's great ages, with striking growth of
agriculture, trade and population as well as massive scholarly and artistic
efforts. Blue and white porcelain with transparent enamels went to every
European city. In 1793 Kin-te-chin had 3,000 furnaces for baking porcelain.
Su-Ch'u had between 3,000 and 4,000 silk-looms. It is hard to believe in the
light of these accomplishments that both soap and underwear were still
unknown in China. Horses were rare and Chinese were still using wooden
saddles and ropes instead of reins. Furthermore, much of their equipment
was primitive. Although there were textile looms in the towns, the
countryside weavers used elementary horizontal looms of a type still used
today by certain nomads in North Africa. Was this lack of good
mechanization because labor was so plentiful and cheap? (Ref. 131, 213,
292)

The population increased from 130,000,000 to 150,000,000 in A.D. 1700 to
313,000,000 by 1794. (Ref. 140) Maize joined the traditional northern crops
of millet and sorghum and allowed the restoration of a demographic balance
between northern and southern China. As in western Europe, Chinese
merchants now had their shops in one place, their houses in another. (Ref.
260) Merchant and artisan guilds greatly expanded in number and function,
with security funds, insurance plans and entertainment programs.
Dictionaries and encyclopedias were published. The Ch'ien-lung Emperor
was probably the most capable ruler of his time, but his reign was
blemished by two things: (1) a literary inquisition in the 1770s to suppress
what he thought to be subversive ideas and (2) in his older age he became
the dupe of a clever guardsman named Ho-shen, who introduced extensive
bribery and corruption in the administration. (Ref. 101)

As East-West contacts became less and less, soon all foreign commerce had
to come through the port of Canton (or at Kyakhta for the Russians). The
extensive exports of tea, silk and porcelain were under government license
at those ports, with silver the standard medium of exchange until very late

in the century when foreign powers began to bring in opium instead of
silver. By the end of the century everyone in China smoked tobacco, even
children. (Ref. 260)

Chinese armies roamed westward over Central Asia and by the Treaty of
Kiakhta in 1727 Russia was forced to acknowledge Chinese jurisdiction
over that region, the last strongholds of nomadic power. In the meantime,
however, the huge Kamchatka Peninsula to the north had been taken by
Russia along with the Kurile Islands. (Ref. 131) Old tribal rebellion
problems also gave intermittent difficulties throughout the century. There
were a number of such uprisings in Yunnan (1726-29), of the Miao of
Kweichow (1795-97), of the Yao in Kwangsi in 1790 and of the Chinese
Muslims of Kansu in 1781-84 and the most serious of all - the great Chin-
ch'uan tribal rebellions of western Szechwan, which simmered from 1746
through 1776. Taiwan had an uprising in 1787, but it was not a major threat
to the Ch'ing Dynasty. At the end of the century, however, as indicated
above, the government was declining with corruption in the administration
and demoralization in the army. (Ref. 8) The tremendous population
increase and the limited amount of land for increasing agricultural
production combined to produce some serious hardships and
impoverishment of the people. This was in part the reason for the White
Lotus rebellion in Szechwan, Shensi and Hupeh in 1795, which continued
into the next century. (Ref. 8)

One must not overlook the extensive, internal water traffic that was and is
so essential for the Chinese life. A witness in 1733 described a perpetual
movement of boats, barks and rafts (some 3 miles long) containing
permanent homes with wives and children aboard. One could almost
believe there were as many people living on water as in the towns and of
the world's greatest maritime trades, linking up the small-craft from the
interior with the Chinese junks and European three-masters. The ordinary
rate of interest between merchants of Canton at the end of this century was
18 to 20%. (Ref. 292)

It was not until this century, long after Vesalius had done human body
dissection in Europe, that direct anatomical studies were done in China,
since Confucius’ doctrines had forbidden violation of the body. (Ref. 125)

Because of government pressure, by 1800 maize and sweet potatoes,
transplanted from America, made up a substantial part of China's total food
and were staples of the poor. (Ref. 101)

JAPAN

The feudal age of the Shogunates continued throughout this era and we
pause here to briefly outline more of the nature of this political
organization. Theoretically at the head of the nation was the divine emperor,
and the apparent ruling house, the hereditary Shogunate, allowed the
emperor and his court a certain monetary allowance each year, while the
Shogun himself luxuriated in the growing wealth of Japan. The Shogun had
a large personal retinue and was advised by a cabinet of 12 members. A
Board of Censors supervised all administrative offices and kept watch on
the feudal lords (Daimye). The latter formally acknowledged allegiance
only to the emperor and some of them successfully limited the Shogun's
powers. Below the lords were the baronets and then the squires. Serving the
lords were a million or more samurai, sword-bearing guardsmen. Every
soldier was a gentleman and every gentleman a soldier and they scorned
mere learning. They were exempt from taxation, received pay from the
baron they served and performed no labor except occasionally to die in
battle. The samurai could keep his sword sharp by splitting a peasant here
and there at will. With them the practice of Hari-Kari developed, as the
code of the samurai demanded great courage, asceticism and self-control.
With decrease of warfare, however, the purely military character of the
caste changed and while the samurai remained a pensioned and privileged
aristocracy, they then began to perform administrative and judicial
functions. Eventually powerful economic political and intellectual forces
began to undermine the delicately poised political system of the Shoguns.
The dominant samurai class became economically dependent upon the
despised merchants and moneylenders. Some samurai manned the learned
professions of medicine, teaching and scholarship. But both lords and
peasants suffered from the radical fluctuation in agricultural prices entailed
by the penetration of a money economy into the countryside. The samurai
with the government tried debasement of the currency, price controls, moral
exhortations and outright confiscation of merchant fortunes, all of no

permanent help. Some lords had to promote new agriculture and mines and
industrial enterprises, including a boost in silk output, while others adopted
sons of merchants, thus improving the family finances and securing for the
merchants the prestige of samurai rank. Through this, class distinctions
began to lose part of their sharpness. Osaka, with 500,000 people by 1783,
was the meeting place of Japanese merchants and the capital Yedo (Tokyo)
was already twice as large as Paris. (Ref. 260) Powerful craft guilds,
officially recognized as early as 1721, extended their networks and
monopolies and in some instances began to resemble western, privileged
trading companies. (Ref. 292)

During this relatively peaceful century Japan's population remained stable
at about 30,000,000, kept down by widespread infanticide and occasional
famine. An excess of rain and grasshoppers in 1732 reduced 2,600,000
people to near starvation while 12,400 people and still more horses and
cattle died. (Ref. 222) But rice production increased as a result of
improvement in seeds, irrigation and drainage systems, tools and
commercialization of fertilizers made from sardines, colza, soya or cotton
cake. In contrast to Europe, changes of fashion in dress did not occur in
Japan and it is said that the nation had not changed its costume for over a
thousand years. (Ref. 260)

In the intellectual and philosophical realms, it should be mentioned that
Japanese scholars completed some 58 years of work in 1715 in the 26
volumes called Dai Nihonshi (The Great History of Japan), but it was in
manuscript form and kept out of print, so that only the aristocratic few had
access to it. The Buddhist monks became quite degenerate and their religion
lost its hold upon the nation, as the Shoguns went over to Confucianism .
The civilization of the old Japan, like so many others, had begun with
religion and was ending with philosophy. The retreat of Buddhism behind
monastic walls was a defensive reaction to foreign cultural and political
pressures. The Neo-Confucians sought to inculcate loyalty and obedience in
all ranks, but some rejected this Sinification and sought new solutions. In
1779 the main line of the imperial family ended without male issue and a
collateral house, the Kanins, took over and they were the one chiefly
responsible for the revival of Shinto. The remodeled Shinto seems to have
ideas borrowed from ecclesiastical and other notions of Christianity. It

attempted to draw men's minds away from the Shogun and back to the
emperor. In another direction, a handful of men began to penetrate the
secrets of western civilization - chiefly through the Dutch language and
books, with then some Japanese publications appearing on medicine,
anatomy, astronomy and geography. (Ref. 46, 12)

KOREA

Korea was a vassal of the Manchu Dynasty of China and political activity
was at low ebb, while intellectual activity was intensive. For the most part,
however, this activity was limited to considerations of moral philosophy
and to genealogical research. In 1706 the Hyeonchungsa Shrine was erected
near Asan in memory of the famous Admiral Yi on whom the government
had already bestowed the title "Chungmu-Kong", meaning "Loyalty-
Chivalry Lord". (Ref. 11)

SOUTHEAST ASIA

MAINLAND SOUTHEAST ASIA

Buddhism had become the palladium of both Burmese and Siamese ethnic
identities, so that the fate of the religion was intertwined with the fate of
those two nations. In Burma the Mons rebelled in 1740, setting up their own
kingdom at Pegu and then returning to capture the Burmese capital, Ava, in
1752. But a new Burmese leader, Alaungpaya, continued the fight and
finally defeated the Mons with their French allies, founding Rangoon in
1755 and re-uniting Burma. In 1759 the same king defeated the British East
India Company on the island of Negrais and the British left Burma. But the
nation's problems were not over. Between 1760 and 1769 the Chinese made
four abortive invasion attempts and finally succeeded in making Burma a
vassal state in 1771. The Burmese also warred some in late century with
Siam, in an attempt to expand their territory. (Ref. 139) Siam continued to
be a large country and extended down the Malay peninsula almost to
Penang.

It was in 1767 that the Siamese capital at Ayudhya was ransacked by the
Burmese, with buildings and art work destroyed and the royal family
members killed or taken captive. When the Burmese were driven out in
1782 anew dynasty, the Chakkri (or Chakri), was established and it has
continued in power to this day. (Ref. 262) The first of that dynasty, King
Rama I, built Wat Phra Keo, a fantastic Theravada Buddhist temple in 1785.
(Ref. 113, 276)

The area now known as Laos was comprised chiefly in the 18th century by
the Kingdom of Lung Prabang, although as early as 1707 the southern part
broke away to be part of Vientiene. Annam (Vietnam) got further territory,
including the area of Saigon, from Cam bodia, but after 1775 the
Vietnamese suffered internal problems, allowing the Thais (Siamese) to also
invade Cambodia. (Ref. 175, 9) Annam became a vassal state to China in
1788. On the Malay Peninsula, the British East India Company acquired
Penang from the Sultan of Kedah for a naval station in 1786 and at the end
of the century the British were beginning to move against the Dutch in the
entire area. (Ref. 8)

INDONESIA AND ADJACENT ISLANDS

Malaria arrived late in Indonesia, but practically destroyed Batavia (now
Djarkarta) in 1732. (Ref. 260) The Dutch introduced coffee cultivation all
along the north coast and the east end of Java, as well as in the Medura
Islands, as they extended their political control. Indonesians were required
to work in spice groves by local princelings who, in turn, were commanded
by Dutch overseers. (Ref. 279) Later the English took Sumatra to hold for
the Dutch and by the Treaty of Paris of 1783; they returned all colonies to
the latter. But the aggressive English again conquered Sumatra in 1795 and
by 1798 the Dutch East India Company was out of business. The British
also temporarily occupied Manila in the Philippines between 1762 and 1764
and during that time opened that city to world commerce. When the Spanish
regained control, however, they again closed the islands to international
trade, although they exchanged American silver for Chinese silk there. (Ref.
8, 213)

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The Far East: A.D. 1801 to 1900

THE FAR EAST
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Asians decided that polished white rice (like the white flour in the west)
was ideal food, but polishing rice removed the drab-colored, outer sheath,
which contains the nutritious germ carrying important foodstuffs. Some
people were developing the deficiency diseases such as Beri-beri, which
affects nerves, heart and digestive systems. (See also Southeast Asia.)

CHINA AND MANCHURIA (Continued Manchu Dynasty)

The Manchu rulers clung tenaciously to their 2,000 year old institutions but
2 types of pressures hastened the collapse of imperial China. The first was
the increasing power and ambitions of the West. English, Dutch, Spanish,
French and Portuguese all had colonial empires in Asia as well as America
and were calling for free-trade. By 1800 and after, westerners found they
could sell the Chinese abundant quantities of opium, even if illegally and
get tea, silk, porcelains and silver back. By 1839 this had provoked war
with England - the Opium War of 1839-42 - chiefly coastal skirmishes,
which went badly for China, nevertheless. Five ports from Canton to
Shanghai were opened to foreign residence and trade and foreign influence
began to be felt. China's fate in the 19th century echoed that of India in the
18th in regard to creeping western invasion. (Ref. 292)

The second factor leading to the collapse of imperial China was the
growing domestic discontent. For 2,000 years China had sustained a highly
advanced culture, although static. Regardless of various foreign invader-
rulers, the huge majority of its people lived on the land in self sufficient and
contained villages, living by ancestral precept. Although at the mercy of
nature, in some ways their technology was well advanced with city walls,
efficient irrigation systems and grand palaces and they lived-with dignity,
rich and poor. (Ref. 242) In the first part of this 19th century travelers
reported that the Chinese "have tranquility without happiness, industry

without improvement, stability without strength and public order without
public morality"[ footnote]. This was soon to change again. Anti-Manchu
secret societies became more active, with the White Lotus Society
rebellion, which had actually started in 1793, now really disrupting north
China by 1804. More and more uprisings continued until 1850, when the
great Taiping Rebellion raged for 15 years, with hundreds of towns
damaged or destroyed and some 30,000,000 lives lost. This Taiping (also
T'ai-p-ing) started in Chin-t'ien in the far south of China in Kwangsi, with a
minority group of half-Christianized peasants under a self-styled Chinese
Messiah, Hung Hsiu-ch'uan, who set out to create an utopia of pastoral,
puritanical communism in central China. They moved to Nanking and soon
had a large area from that city south, including most of Hepeh, Chekiang,
Kiangse and part of Fukien under control. In spite of their original ideal
they were soon just killing people and before it was suppressed in 1864 it
had cost 5 to 10 million lives, statistically the greatest war until World War
1. Their advances included one almost to Peking in 1853-54 and on into
Szechwan in 1856-63.

Quotation from de Tocqueville (Ref. 242), page 90

The population of China by 1850 was over 400,000,000[footnote]and was
beginning again to surpass food production. Corruption and indolence in
government made things worse and unemployment increased. In addition
there were Muslim uprisings which depopulated large areas in Yunnan
between 1855 and 1873 and an area just south of the Great Wall in 1863 to
1873, Miao tribal uprisings in Kweichow between 1854 and 1873 and Nien
rebels, who invaded Chihli in 1868 and the Hakka-Cantonese War in
Kwantung between 1855 and 1857. (Ref. 101, 12, 8)

Contrasting to 4,000,000 in the United States at 1800 and 30,000,000 in the
whole of Russia

Thus began China's modern history. In the last half of the century Manchu
and true Chinese leaders tried to respond to economic and military
incursions of the West with the so-called self strengthening movement, to
adapt western technology without disturbing traditional political and social
orders. From 1870 to near the end of the century it seemed to be working
fairly well, but this was misleading and the imperial order completely fell a
few years later. (Ref. 101)

To leave the political scene for a bit, we should reiterate that by the 1820s
Manchu China was the world's largest and most populous empire, directly
controlling vast territories in inner Asia and drawing tribute f rom still
larger areas including Korea, Indo-China, Siam, Burma and Nepal. A postal
service with 2,000 express stations, over 30,000 horses and almost 50,000
foot messengers and 70,000 service people was used basically as a means of
control by the imperial government. In 1855 troops were sent across the
Salween River into Yunnan province to suppress some rebels in an area
where bubonic plague was endemic. The troops not only contracted the
disease but brought it back into the remainder of China and by 1894 it had
reached Canton and Hong Kong. It was then that teams of scientists were
sent in and the bacillus Pasteurella pestis identified and the mode of
transmission, by fleas from rodents to men, was established. In the
meantime steamships were carrying the disease f rom China around the
world. Chinese medicine continued to fascinate the West. The
Pharmacopoeia, called Pen Ts'ao, listed many wines. Tortoise wine was
good for bronchitis; snake wine was curative of palsy; dog wine helped
lassitude and mutton wine was good for the testicles. (Ref. 8, 140, 211, 213)

We must include a few words about Chinese paintings. Japanese collectors
have given the impression that Sung paintings are great, Yuan occasionally
good, and Ming and Ch'ing increasingly imitative and sterile. This not what
the Chinese themselves think, but their traditions are not those of the West.
Their paintings of ten have no background at all and they feel no
compulsion to fill up the canvas with details. Similarly they do not handicap
themselves with convention about perspective. In landscapes particularly,
the viewer might consider himself as if suspended in air, shif ting about to
view different parts of the scene. (Ref. 101)

In 1894 Japan defeated China in a year of war and incidentally then took
control of Formosa, along with a cash indemnity. After that defeat a
generation of revolutionary Chinese leaders, of whom Sun- Yat-Sen (d.
1925) was the most imminent, undertook an almost panic search for new
talismans of power and national salvation. The obvious models were the
great western powers, so in 1898 the young Emperor Huang Hsu issued a
series of astonishing decrees which, if they could have been accepted and
enforced, would have advanced China vigorously and yet peaceably on the

road to westernization. But the Dowager Empress, shocked by what seemed
to her the radicalism of those edicts, imprisoned Huang Hsu, annulled his
decrees and made herself the government of China, with a reaction against
all western ideas. She deftly turned an organization known - historically as
the "Boxers", originally formed by rebels against her own dynasty, into a
furious movement against foreign invaders. This resulted in a killing of
Christians, which in turn caused retaliation by armies of the west, including
some from the United States. Those armies moved in on Peking and
slaughtered the inhabitants in 1900. As in India, it is little wonder that
Christianity has had very little success in China. At the beginning of the
19th century a real Protestant missionary effort had been made by English
and American churches, but it has been estimated that there were never
more than 1,000,000 converts and few of those were 100% converted. In
this 19th century perhaps 12,000,000 Chinese migrated into Southeast Asia
and along the Indian coast. (Ref. 139, 101, 12)

Manchuria remained somewhat isolated, kept as the special preserve of the
Manchu emperors. It had great agricultural potential but was closed to
immigrants. In 1858 and 1860 Russia took back 380,000 square miles of
Manchuria from a rather helpless China, claiming that the original Treaty of
Nerchinsk (see page 906) had been signed under duress. That area, as well
as Korea, then remained under Russian influence until after the war with
Japan was concluded early in the next century. (Ref. 101, 131, 8)

JAPAN

Japan exhibited a marked duality under the Tokugawa Shoguns, a
separation between political and economic power; moral ideal of Spartan
walriors versus sensuous indulgences of the "Floating World". Then in
1850 there was conflict among rival cliques over the succession to a
childless ruler and that set the stage so that the rather modest emergency of
Perry's "black ships" triggered far-ranging, deep-going transformations of
Japanese society. The Age of Military Feudalism of Japan may be said to
have terminated at that time when Commodore Matthew Perry arrived in
Uraga Bay in 1853 with 2 warships and 2 side-wheelers. The American got
nowhere with negotiations at that time, but he returned 8 months later in

1854 with 9 ships, 3 under steam, along with a miniature steam train, which
he set up on shore for demonstration. The subsequent dedication of the
Japanese to trains may have started with that. Treaties allowing western
access to 2 ports, with resident western consular officials followed. But this
was still not the end of turmoil in Japan regarding East-West intercourse.
The emperor ref used to sign the treaties and political war against the
Tokugawas was instituted and Lemochi became shogun. In 1862, at
Emperor Komei's order, Lord Shimazu of Satsuma went to - Kyoto, killed a
few enemies and, with Prince Ashiko, temporarily got rid of the emperor's
chief advisor, Iwakura of the clan of Choshu.

The aims of modern Japan were set at that time. Although the imperial
family had always had a goal of expansion to eventually conquer the world,
the group who wanted to first start north against Russia were represented by
Iwakura and his clan and they were now out of favor. The apostles of the
strike south concept, moving against the West through Singapore and
Manila, were in the ascendancy and along with that the policy of exclusion
of foreigners from the sacred soil was continued. In 1865, as Japan was
preparing for civil war between the Shogun Tukugawa and the Lord of
Choshu, the Perry treaty remained unfulfilled and the nation came to a
standstill. It was not until the old emperor was assassinated in 1868 and the
new Emperor Meiji took over that the troops of the Tokugawa Shogun were
defeated and a new era of reform, including some breakdown of class
distinction, transfer of the capital to Edo (now Tokyo) and the restrictions
against westerners were temporarily lifted. The theory was that Japan must
grow strong, expand overseas to establish a defense perimeter outside the
sacred soil and only then expel the barbarians. Iwakura, back in power as an
adviser, went overseas for 2 years to see what Japan had to contend with in
the rest of the world, while the homeland began to industrialize. An
anachronism is that even in this 19th century sugar cane was still milled by
manpower, in Japan. (Ref. 260) Returning from abroad, Iwakura gradually
forced Korea to open her ports to Japanese commerce by gun-boat
diplomacy and at the same time, by getting hoarded gold from wealthy
merchants, he stabilized Japan's economy and established public confidence
in his currency and bonds. In a sense Japan became westernized by fiat.
Militarism was reinforced, conscription was adopted late in the 1870s after
a brief but brutal civil war and the army was organized on the Prussian

model. (Ref. 279) Japanese merchants became the shipping magnates, the
money lenders the financiers and the cities of Tokyo, Osaka, Hiroshima,
Nagasaki and Kokura became great industrial centers. When the strong man
Iwakura Tomoni died, Emperor Meiji himself, although remaining in the
background, carefully continued the industrialization. His sons were
educated in Europe at Sandhurst and St. Cyrl, the Polytechnique,- etc.
learning the military physics and western arts of war. Saion ji Kinmochi, a
prince of the Fujiwara family had gone abroad to study also in 1871 and
remained in Paris 9 years. On his return home, he helped draft a constitution
based primarily on Bismarck's for Germany, although he retained all-
encompassing power for the emperor. It was presented to the people in
1889; (Ref. 139, 12, 8, 242)

The population of Japan in 1888 was 39,500,000 and the proportion living
in cities of over 100,000 was small. This population was to double in the
next 30 years, even though the Japanese islands are smaller than California,
with only about 1/6 of the land arable. The Sino-Japanese War, beginning in
1894, had developed over the control of Korea and Taiwan and was simply
a part of the long range plan of conquering both China and Russia. It started
Japan on its course as a great power. Using their adequate coal deposits and
their long standing copper industry, Japan launched heavy industry on a
large scale after 1895. The ultimate result of all these political and
commercial changes was a decline of the shoguns and a regaining of
supreme powers by the emperors in a more overt manner. The Shinto
religion was revised, the emperor was considered divine by lineage and
wisdom and the country underwent an amazingly rapid transformation into
a modern nation. There was improved agriculture as well industrialization
and an improved silk worm culture allowed independence from the Chinese
silk producers. Japanese settlers migrated throughout their empire,
including the newly won Taiwan, obtained in the Treaty of Shimonoseki
(1895). Universal military service had been introduced in 1872 and the
Gregorian calendar had been adopted in 1873. (Ref. 8, 46, 68, 242)

KOREA

Throughout most of the century Korea remained under suzerainty of the
Chinese Manchus, although with their own kings. After systemic
persecution of Christians under the regent Tai Wen Kun, there were several
western expeditions attacking Korea, including a French force and an
American naval force under Captain Shufeldt. Three ports were opened to
Japanese trade in 1876 and in 1882 a treaty with the United States,
negotiated by Shufeldt, allowed certain extra-territorial rights and
permission to trade. China and Japan then began to dispute rights of control
over the peninsula. In 1894, led by a Japanese underworld strongman sent
specifically for the purpose, a group of Koreans, the Tonghaks, known to
favor closing the country to Japanese trade, started a revolution. When
Chinese troops were being mobilized at the call of the Korean government
and Czar Nicholas had massed troops on the northern Korean border,
Japanese troops suddenly arrived by sea and occupied Seoul and other
Korean cities. The Chinese navy, attempting to prevent reinforcements of
the invaders, was sunk by the Japanese navy. The non-entity, who was the
emperor of Korea, ran to Russia. China sued for peace, giving Japan the
right to "protect" Korea, an indemnity and the island of Taiwan. But
Russian influence was still dominant and a Russian-Korean Bank was
formed, while timber and mining concessions were given to Russia. On
June 9, 1896 Japan and Russia established the Labanov- Yamagata
Agreement under which the two countries cooperated in the reform of the
army and finances of Korea, but Russian penetration continued, setting the
stage for the Russian-Japanese War in the next century. (Ref. 8, 12, 119, 46)

SOUTHEAST ASIA

MAINLAND SOUTHEAST ASIA

BURMA

Burma, having failed to invade Siam in the last century, now turned its
expansion policy toward the west, threatening Bengal, seizing Manipur and

Assam in 1822. This soon brought King Bagyidaw up against the British
East India Company and in the next 62 years there were three Burmese
Wars with the British. The latter won the first war of 1824-26 and annexed
Assam, Arakan and Tenasserim to British India. After the 2nd war in 1852
the British occupied the Irrawaddy delta region and stimulated great rice
production there, as well as opening up the great teak forests. After the 3rd
war in 1886 Upper Burma was added to the British domain, although
guerrilla activity continued for years, with 32,000 British troops still
involved between 1886 and 1891. The Shan states were not subdued until
1887 and the Chin Hills not until 1891. (Ref. 8, 175, 119)

THAILAND: SIAM AND CAMBODIA

After the long conflict with Burma had ended, Siam secured part of
Cambodia through division of that state with Annam and finally, in 1844,
the whole of Cambodia passed under the protection of Siam's King
Mongkut. Rama IV (1851-1868), ruler and monk, philosopher and scientist,
who taught himself English and Latin, made a study of western
governments and began the work of modernizing Siam. After new treaties
were drawn up with Great Britain in 1855, consuls were established and
trade agreements initiated. In 1863 the French established a protectorate
over Cambodia and Siam gave up its claims to that region. The real founder
of modern Siam was Rama V, Chulalongkorn. Under him the old feudal
system was abolished, slavery was reduced and there was administrative
reform with new taxation and finance methods, better postal service, the
telegraph (1883) and the first railway in 1893. But the French had long been
trying to extend their dominions westward to the Mekong River and finally,
after an acute Anglo-

French crisis and some gunboat activity and blockades, the Siamese yielded

and abandoned all claim to territory east of the Mekong. In 1897 the King
of Siam paid an extended visit to the European capitals. (Ref. 8, 276)

VIETNAM: FRENCH INDOCHINA

At the beginning of this 19th century most of present day North and South
Vietnam and Laos, at one time all together called French IndoChina, was
ruled by the Emperor of Annam and the region was predominantly Chinese
in culture, with the empire acknowledging the suzerainty of the Chinese
emperor. After a long period of dynastic struggles, the domain had been re-
united by Gia Long (1802-1820) and he had been supported by the French
missionary, Pigneau de Behaine. The French Catholics had freedom of
action until after 1820 when a series of anti-Christian emperors came to
power and they were then persecuted for 60 years. Because of that the
French, with some Spanish, bombarded Tourane on the coast in 1858 and
soon the French occupied Saigon in what was then called Cochin China.
Subsequently the French explored both the Mekong and the Red rivers.
About 1873 Francis Garnier, with a handful of men, attacked and took
Hanoi and most of the Red River delta. In 1874, by a treaty signed at
Saigon, the Annam emperor was forced to give a promise that his foreign
policy would coincide with that of France and that he would recognize the
French possession of Cochin China in exchange for the return of Hanoi. But
the emperor appealed to China for aid and by 1885 France was at war with
China. In the end France won control of all Annam and protective power
over Cambodia and by 1893 had acquired a protectorate over Laos, which
had long been in dispute between Siam and Annam. Paul Doumer, as
governor-general over the vast French Indo-China, inaugurated far-
reaching- reforms which modernized the region, but there was continued
resistance to the westerners. The opposition in Annam was led by De Tham
from after 1895 until well into the 20th century and there were revolts in
Cambodia and Saigon in the 1885-1887 period. (Ref. 119, 8)

MALAYA

When Holland fell to French revolutionary troops in Europe, the British
usurped Malacca and various southeastern Asian islands from the Dutch.
Lt. Governor Sir Thomas Stamford Raffles founded Singapore in 1819 and
it was soon to become a strategic and commercial center of the region. The
Dutch, of course, were unhappy and all was not settled until the Anglo-
Dutch Treaty of 1824, drawing a line through the straits of Malacca, with
the English holding Singapore and Malacca, but giving up a west Sumatran

settlement. There was a steady influx of Chinese laborers into the peninsula
after 1850, with some working in the tin mines and some turning to piracy.
The British abolished import duties on tin in 1853 and by 1900 Malaya
furnished nearly 1/2 the world's supply. The rule of the British East India
Company ended in 1867 and thereafter the Malayan Straits settlements had
the status of a crown colony. Rubber was first grown there experimentally
in 1894. (Ref. 8)

INDONESIA AND ADJACENT ISLANDS

The British took Java from the Dutch in 1811, although after the fall of
Napoleon in 1815 they restored many of the Dutch possessions, as noted
above, retaining chiefly Singapore. It was during the English occupation in
1814, however, that the governor of Java, Thomas Raffles, learned of the
ruins of Borobudur (see pages 501-2,531 and 567) and he initiated some
minor cleaning work that was carried on later on a small scale by the Dutch
for the remainder of the century. The first real reconstruction work was not
carried out until the 20th century. (Ref. 286) In 1825 the Javanese revolted
against the Dutch under the native leader, Dipo Negora, and it took 5 years
for the Dutch to quiet things down. They then extended their control into
the interior, forcing a new culture system, which involved government
contracts, crop control and fixed prices, all very lucrative to the westerners.
Quinchona plantations were established in Java in 1854, giving Europeans
the first reliable source of the right kind of bark to supply quinine to protect
them in their world-wide expansion. In 1,886 the Dutch even sent medical
teams to the Indonesian colonies to study Beri-beri and they discovered the
essence of the vitamin requirements, although the details were not actually
clarified until after the turn of the century.

In the 1840s Great Britain again entered this area with a charter for the
North Borneo Company which was to have a protectorate over Sarawak,
with James Brooke becoming the Rajah of Sarawak. This upset the Dutch,
but eventually by a treaty in 1891 the two European countries defined their
respective domains in Borneo, with the Dutch retaining the larger part. (Ref.
8, 140, 211)

The Philippines continued under Spanish control through most of the
century, with the Spanish having great difficulty subjugating the war-like
Moros. Although the growing of tobacco, sugar and hemp had been
promoted, Manila was not officially opened to foreign traders until 1834.
The Jesuit priests who had been expelled from the island in the last century
now returned and gained much power and property. It was in opposition to
that clergy that much sentiment arose for independence, with the rebels
being led by Emilio Aguinaldo. When the Spanish-American war broke out,
the Americans took Manila while Aguinaldo led a new insurrection. At the
war's end, to the Philippine leader's great disappointment, the islands gained
only American sovereignty, instead of Spanish. He then led still another
revolution against the United States in 1899, but this quickly subsided to
merely guerrilla warfare, although it cost 7,000 American casualties by the
time of its termination in 1902. (Ref. 8)

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CON MDUBWN FR

Geographical Presentation of The Near East
Back to Introduction to the Method of Geographical Presentation

Although in present media parlance the "Middle East" includes Egypt, we
prefer to consider that country as basically a part of Africa and will use the
term NEAR EAST to refer to the area shown within the black border on the
map below. In spite of its overall small size, we shall divide this
geographical region into five subdivisions.

THE ARABIAN PENINSULA

This includes all the present countries of the Arabian Peninsula, including
Oman, Yemen, Democratic Yemen, Kuwait and Saudi Arabia, as well as
some smaller emirates and nations. Jordan, lying at the base of the
peninsula is included also, since its people and land have historically been
an intimate part of the desert culture.

MEDITERRANEAN COASTAL AREAS OF ISRAEL AND
LEBANON

Present day Lebanon is almost identical geographically with ancient
Phoenicia but Israel's borders have varied greatly under differing names
throughout the ages. Although Syria has always had a narrow opening on
the sea, we prefer to group this country with its eastern neighbor, Iraq. The
eastern Mediterranean coast is and always has been Semitic, although Jew
and Arab alike seem to want to deny their genetic relationship and the area
has been a constant battlefield as well as a crossroads between Asia, Africa
and Europe.

IRAQ AND SYRIA

Present Iraq has nearly the same borders as ancient Mesopotamia. Syria has
had mobile borders for centuries and we are maintaining this designation
for that area wedged between Asia Minor, Iraq and Lebanon. Historically,

linguistically, politically and genetically it has always had close association
with Iraq.

IRAN: PERSIA

Iran is basically a non-Arabic, non-Semitic country with an Indo-European
speaking people. I-historically and religiously, however, it has been a part
of the Near East for centuries, at present sharing the majority Moslem
religion. Its eastern portion is chiefly desert.

ASIA MINOR: ANATOLIA

The Anatolian peninsula, currently represented chiefly by the country of
Turkey, historically has been a land of many different nations and peoples.
In the eastern end, the ancient country of Armenia has been now absorbed
mainly by the Soviet Union but we are keeping this district of ancient
Armenia as a Separate entity in this work.

ETHIOPIA SOMALIA

The Near East (This map was obtained from
http://english. freemap.jp/index.html and is
used with permission under a Creative
Commons Attribution 3.0 license.)

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The Near East: Beginning to 8000 B.C.

THE NEAR EAST

It has been mentioned earlier in the chapter that before 13,000 B.C. the area
now covered by the Mediterranean Sea was in part a land mass with only
connected fresh water lakes, fed by the Nile and Adriatic rivers and
drainage from the Black Sea area. As the glaciers continued to melt the
Atlantic Ocean level rose and spilled over the Gibralter barrier into the
Mediterranean basin. It is possible that a great accumulation of men of the
dark-white Iberian race had occupied this lush basin and now had to spread
north, south and east. In the Near East, as we know it today, there were
people at 20,000 B.C. eating snails, river crabs, fresh water mussels, turtles
and various nuts. Cooking by boiling could not be well developed before
the use of pottery, as one must have fire proof containers for the water.
Some other previous methods may have been used in localized areas and on
a small scale, such as the use of a large mollusc or reptile shell, animal
stomachs, etc.

The eastern Mediterranean shore has been warm and wet enough for human
habitation for at least 20,000 years and remains of the classical Neanderthal
man have been found there predating that period, particularly in Israel,
Lebanon and Iraq, where typical Mousterian Culture tools have been found
in both caves and open sites. At about 10,000 B.C. the Natufians
(archaeologist term for a particular group studied in digs) were taking their
first steps toward building permanent settlements, storing food and similar
basic activities. This Mesolithic culture of about 10,000 to 8,500 B.C. was
centered in Palestine, but extended north into Syria and Lebanon and west
into Egypt and surrounding Africa. Querns for grinding and sickles were
used and the people apparently hunted gazelles. Agricultural communities
appeared where rainfall permitted. Additional Notes

Upper Paleolithic cultures flourished in caves in Anatolia from 13,000 B.C.
onwards and there are cave sites at the southeast corner of the Caspian Sea
from 10,500 B.C. on. Seasonal settlements with mudbrick cubicles and
plastered floors in the central Zagros Mountains date to the 9th millennium
B.C. Tannahill (Ref. 211) says that even back at 40,000 B.C. there was one

person for every thirty-one square miles in Iran, and the bones found there
are chiefly of wild goats and red deer, although those of hare, fox, leopard
and wild cattle have also been found. As the Ice Age ended and the glaciers
receded, the seas rose rapidly, particularly where there were wide
continental shelves.

The flooding in the Persian Gulf area between seven and ten thousand years
ago must have been spectacular, and before the Tigris and Euphrates rivers
filled the valley with silt, the sea reached inland over hundreds of miles,
undoubtedly giving rise to the flood stories so common in all heritages of
the old civilizations of the Near East. Some feel that a sinking of the bed
rock under the Mesopotamian plains may have outstripped the opposite
effect of silting, and thus contributed to the flooding. (Ref. 211, 68, 8, 158,
224, 45, 130, 226)

At Eridu, south of Ur, the Iraq government has unearthed ruins of fourteen
temples, one above the other, all belonging to the "first Al'Ubaid period",
which was before a tremendous flooding of this entire valley occurred,
filling the land between the Syrian desert plateau on the west and the
Persian mountains on the east, representing some tremendous catastrophe of
nature and remembered thereafter in the peoples’ legends as "The Flood"- a
recurring story throughout Mesopotamian and Near Eastern history. In the
excavations of the strata below the flood silt there was pottery, evidence
already of far flung trade, and at Ur, Woolly even found two beads made of
amazonite, a stone of which the nearest known source is the Nighiri hills of
central India’ Whether the pre-flood people should properly be called
Sumerians is disputed. The famous Sumerian King lists, found later on
various tablets, show legendary kings before the flood and the length of
each reign was described from 18,000 years back. Then, say the tablets, the
flood came. The lists of kings after the flood again are all legendary down
to "The First Dynasty of Ur" which we shall discuss later. The flood plain
had eleven feet of silt which has been estimated to mean a flood not less
than twenty-five feet deep over the flat, low-lying land of Mesopotamia. Ur,
today, is 200 miles from the sea, but only fourteen feet above sea level.
(Ref. 238)

Sheep were domesticated in northern Iraq about 9,000 B.C., certainly by
8,900 B.C., but it is possible that they were brought from the east around
the Caspian Sea by nomads who had domesticated them even earlier.

Note:Stone Age hunter-gatherers left stone tools, hand axes, borers,
scrapers, knives and arrowheads from one end of the peninsula to the other.
The now dry wadis must have gushed with water at that time, although
they apparently dried up about 15,000 years ago. (Ref. 315)

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The Near East: 8000 to 5000 B.C.

THE NEAR EAST
Back to The Near East: Beginning to 8000 B.C.

The early agriculture of the naturally growing wild wheat and barley in
parts of this area allowed the development of communities permanent
enough to develop brick and stone for both private and public buildings.
The earliest sites were not far from the mountain ranges which had been the
original home of the cereals just mentioned and all were within a belt of
300 millimeters (120 inches) rainfall a year, or in a flood plain. Such were
Tell es-Sultan at Jericho and Catal Huyuk in central Turkey. The latter
covered thirty-two acres with perhaps 6,000 to 10,000 people, with
evidence of long distance trade, volcanic glass for tools and blue apatite for
ornamentation. This center came to an end about 5,000 B.C., apparently
simply abandoned. But the first known pottery and woolen textiles were
found there[footnote]. Jericho, in Judea, is thought to be the world's oldest
city, dating back 9,000 years ago, some 4,000 years before the first
Sumerian city. Sitting beside a spring near the Dead Sea, it had stone walls
and a tower thirty feet high and a population of perhaps 2,500, all living
800 feet below sea level, whereas its counter-part Catal Huyuk was at an
altitude of more than 3,000 feet. In both it appears that women cultivated
the crops and looked after cattle while the men went hunting with their
newly domesticated dogs. Additional Notes

Hugh Thomas (Ref. 213) says that the world's first pottery was a
monochrome type made in Iraq about 7,000 B.C. with painted pottery
appearing about 6,500 B.C.

Although not yet at the stage of city building, Sumerians in Mesopotamia
are thought to have invented the wheel sometime between 65500 and 6,300
B.C. (Ref. 222) Wheat and barley were both grown in southern Iraq by
79000 B.C. Excavations at Tell es-Sawwan, seventy miles northwest of
Baghdad indicate a high level of civilization there around 6,000 B.C., with
buildings built from unbaked, mortared bricks and houses with access
through the roofs and coated with plaster, then bitumen and finally facings
of gypsum. This site was occupied for 1,000 years and has similarity to

Catal Huyuk although occurring much later in time. It fills in a gap between
the new Stone Age and recorded history. Thus the so-called "Neolithic
Revolution" appears to have taken place between 7,000 and 6,500 B.C.
Some instruments instead of being chipped were now highly polished. The
first farm animal tamed was probably the goat, which lives off wild grass.
Sheep, pigs and finally cattle followed. The pig is not a ruminant and pig-
rearing could not occur until nuts, acorns, meat scraps and cooked grain
were available. Cattle, domesticated either in Turkey or Macedonia between
6,000 and 5,800 B.C., offered a difficult task as the originals were fiery and
agile, but this was a most important step in man's exploitation of the animal
world. They were brought under control by poor feeding, close penning,
hobbling and castration of the bulls. The barn yard animal became man's
first power tool, but cattle were not used in any other area of the world in
this millenium time-frame. Even in this Near East region desert still
predominated and man and animals were actually crowded in oases. Eridu
was an agricultural settlement of 5,000 B.C. (Ref. 68, 8, 213, 222)

Woolen garments were woven and there is evidence of early trade in
obsidian which was ideal for tools. This came from the area of Lake Van
and was exported to Mesopotamia as early as 7,000 B.C. Baskets and
wooden as well as stone vessels had been invented before the 6th
millennium. At Hacilar in Asia Minor, beginning about 5,500 B.C. there is
evidence of a Chalcolithic Culture which involves the use of pure copper
along with stone. Elam, in southern Iran was settled by the 8th millennium
and in the middle of the 6th Iran had farming villages with irrigation
agriculture, supplemented by hunting. Animal paintings and imported
copper tools have been found.

As we have noted in the last chapter, the Black Sea, up to this time, had
been a freshwater lake, connected in turn to the Caspian-Aral system. Now,
as the ice cap melted and the sea level rose, salt water in the Mediterranean
eventually went over the Bosporan shelf into the Black Sea, killing the
fresh-water life it contained. The decomposed remains of this ice-age
population still poisons the lower levels of the stagnant Black Sea, which is

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Note:People living in reed huts along the Persian Gulf on the Arabian
peninsula had some kind of commerce with Mesopotamia by 5000 B.C.
(Ref. 315)

The Near East: 5000 to 3000 B.C.

ARABIAN PENINSULA
Back to The Near East: 8000 to 5000 B.C.

This was the fount and breeding place of the Semitic peoples, although at
this particular time only Bedouins and nomad tribesmen existed and there
was no true civilization, at least in the western two-thirds of the peninsula.
Recent excavations on the Island of Bahrain and adjacent Saudi Arabia
have suggested the presence of a vanished empire which the Sumerians
referred to as "Dilmun", center of earthly paradise. Excavated objects
indicate commercial activity oriented both towards India and Mesopotamia.
Surface shards and implements have been dated back to about 4,000 B.C.
(Ref. 176) Apparently after the Wet Phase, about 4,000 B.C. there was a
progressive dessication of the Arabian peninsula which may have
contributed to the northward migrations of peoples into the Syrian Desert
which began shortly thereafter. (Ref. 88)Additional Notes

MEDITERRANEAN COASTAL AREAS OF ISRAEL AND
LEBANON

The people of the coast in these early millennia may have been of the
original Mediterranean race now represented in this part of the world only
by the Georgian Caucasians. Timnal, in southern Israel, was a source of
large amounts of surf ace ores of malachite, so there was a Chalcolithic
Palestinian civilization called the Ghassulian Culture, using the first
deliberate alloy, arsenical copper. (Ref. 8) The original locations of coastal
towns, and later major cities, was occasioned to great extent by the location
of springs and thus there has of ten resulted continuous occupation of the
Same spots over many centuries, with the consequent rise of debris mounds,
or tells (Ref. 88). Additional Notes

IRAQ AND SYRIA

Iraq is the area of the ancient Mesopotamia, a word derived from mesos
meaning "between" and potamos or "river". The wheel and the plow are
thought by most to have been invented or brought here sometime about
3,500 B.C.1. Cattle were used as beasts of burden about the same time.
There is evidence of irrigation on a steppe east of Mesopotamia by 5,000
B.C., and classically historians have described three more or less separate
civilizations which developed in the river basins of Mesopotamia perhaps
as early as 4,500 B.C. The most important of these will be discussed first:

SUMER (On the Euphrates River)AIl historians seem agreed that the
Sumerians were non-Semitic, but their origin is much disputed. Some have
suggested Iberian or Dravidian affinities. McEvedy (Ref. 136) thinks they
may have been part of the aboriginal Caucasian people and to this is added
the opinion of Sir Leonard Woolley (Ref. 238) that their language was that
of the early Caucasians. They used copper from 5,000 B.C. onward and
their clay tablets give us records back to 3,300 B.C. in the city of Ur, which
was then a seaport. The geography of Mesopotamia has changed greatly
through the millennia. In addition to the Tigris and Euphrates, the Karun
River from the Persian mountains and Wadi al Batin, draining the heart of
Arabia, all enter the Persian Gulf, the latter two at almost right angles to the
former two. Many millennia ago, the last two rivers discharged a mass of
silt across the gulf, which then extended even north of present day
Baghdad, and eventually made a bar against which similar silt of the two
chief rivers piled up, forming dry land directly across the gulf. The effect
was to turn the upper end of the then existing gulf into a stagnant lake
which was still fed by the waters of the Tigris and Euphrates, but which
then turned from salty to brackish and then to actual fresh water.
Eventually, of course, even the lake built up with silt, making the area the
most fertile land on earth. Although Ur, then on the sea coast, became the
great capital of Sumer, the city of Eridu, south of this, seems older and in a
nearby village of al'Ubaid there has been found ancient pottery, in some
ways similar to pottery also found at Susa, in ancient Elam and which might
have a common ancestry from some foreign place. Could the origin be
Bahrain, the island down the gulf where Danish excavations now show a
civilization possibly older than Sumer? There is a Sumerian legend which
tells how a race of monsters, half fish and half human, came from the

Persian Gulf, led by Oannes, and introduced the arts of writing, agriculture
and metallurgy.

The Sumerians had wheeled vehicles[ footnote], wheel-made pottery,
sailboats and animal-drawn plows. The sailboats were of particular interest
because recent information indicating a much greater and extensive
maritime trade with large, reed, wash-through ships has been made
available. Thor Heyerdahl, constructing such a ship from the reeds of the
Tigris Euphrates delta region in 1980 has demonstrated that such ships
could sail to India and to Africa. The concept that the civilization of
Bahrain may have antedated Sumer is compatible with a new theory
suggested by Heyerdahl (Ref. 95) and discussed under II,C of this chapter.
From the records of Ur there is evidence of the presence of boats of almost
one hundred tons and a ceramic boat model in the Iraq Museum with a
cylindrical footing for its mast dates back to at least 4,000 B.C. The potters’
wheel was invented in Erech about 3,000 B.C., perhaps along with the brick
mold.

As noted in the previous chapter, Trager (Ref. 222) says that the wheel was
invented much earlier, just after 6,500 B.C. in Sumeria

These same Sumerians developed the duodecimal system of measurement
giving rise to our twelve inches to the foot, sixty minutes in an hour and
three hundred sixty degrees in a circle. In addition to the island "Dilmun",
they mention "Magan" as a distant copper mountain and "Meluhha" which
may well have been the great Indus Valley civilization. At 5,000 B.C. they
had primitive irrigation systems used to water fields as far as three miles on
either side of a river. The resulting larger and richer crops, along with the
necessity of water administration systems, probably led to the growth of
some of the towns. Eventually, however, this leaching out of the earth's salts
led to soil infertility. The food of Sumer included barley, wheat, millett,
chickenpeas, lentils, beans, turnips, onions, garlic, leeks, cucumbers,
lettuce, cress and mustard. There was plenty of fish and some beef and veal
if one could afford it. The beef source, however, was from animals after
their useful worklife was over and therefore it was tough. Mutton was
common along with goat and pork, the last only until about 1,800 B.C. The
Indo-European nomads roaming through the Mid-East may have started the
loathing of pork, since they could be herded only with difficulty and had

little stamina for movement. Forty percent of the Sumerian grain yield was
used for ale production, but since no hops were available there was no true
beer.

A temple workman received the equivalent of 2.2 American pints of ale a
day and senior dignitaries five times that amount, some of which they may
have used as currency. The cultivated grape came to Mesopotamia from the
Caucasus about 5,000 B.C. and in later years, as the irrigation soured the
soil and grain became more difficult to grow, many people took to either

AKKADIA-KISH This second center of civilization consisted of a Semitic
people living to the north and west of Sumer with a separate culture. There
is evidence that their Third Dynasty was in effect as early as 3,638 B.C.
More will be heard about them in the next chapter.

IRAN (PERSIA)

A third center of civilization with copper weapons and tools, hieroglyphic
writing and domesticated animals appeared east of Sumer, with a capital at
Susa. Older writers thought that they might have been a Negroid[footnote |
people, some moderns feel that they were probably the ancestors of the
Medes, while McEvedy (Ref. 136) writes that they were relatives of the
Sumerians, in that they were a part of the original Caucasian race of
Georgians. We are speaking of the ancient country of Elam, a part of
present Iran. There was much copper around the southern Caucasus, the
shore of the Caspian Sea and down to the Persian Gulf. Remains of a
Chalcolithic culture have been found at Anau, Tepe Hissar and Rarjy dating
to 3,000 B.C. Painted pottery cultures with mixed farming and trade activity
existed in central Iran in the 2nd half of the 5th Millennium. Copper lying
free had been found and hammered into utensils beginning about 7,000
B.C. and about 5,000 B.C. copper was obtained by firing malachite which
releases the flowing metal at a relatively low temperature. Tin ore, of ten
found with malachite, soon yielded its metal and the tin-copper (bronze)
alloy resulted in some areas by 3,800 B.C. The best bronze, consisting of
15% tin, is three times as hard as copper alone. (Ref. 21, 45, 136)

As for example, H.G. Wells, (Ref. 229)

ASIA MINOR

In this era there were colonies of the Cycladian civilization along the coast
and a well developed Chalcolithic culture of basic Caucasian peoples
inland. A 1978 study of skeletons from a dig at Kalinkaya in central
Anatolia, dating to this period, indicated that the people were relatively
short, the men averaging five feet four inches and the women just five feet.
20% of the women had healed ankle fractures or foot bone changes,
probably from falls in their rocky country homes. There is some indication
of nutritional stress in bowed tibiae, flattened long bones and flattened
pelvic inlets. 33% of the limited number of skeletons studied showed
vertebral osteoarthritis (compared to 50% in modern United States), and
12% showed extremity osteoarthritis (compared to 29% in modern U.S.)
(Ref. 4). Agricultural societies were well distributed and there was trade
and migration with other countries of the Near East. (Ref. 88)

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Note:Although there is still much confusion and argument about the origin
and domestication of the camel, recent writers suggest that domestication
occurred in southern Arabia possibly as early as the 4th millennium B.C.
and their use was extended to Egypt even before the first dynasty, that is,
before 3100 B.C. (Ref. 313) Another recent writer, Hamblin (Ref. 315),
however, although agreeing that domestication occurred among the
southern Arabian tribes, would put the date much later, at 2500 B.C.

Note:When ancient Israel was under Ptolemaic control late in the 4th
millennium B.C., Jemmeh in the northwestern Negev desert was occupied
by a small group of Chalcolithic hunting and farming people, but
subsequently it was apparently abandoned for some 1,300 to 1,400 years.
(Ref. 295)

The Near East: 3000 to 1500 B.C.

THE NEAR EAST
Back to The Near East: 5000 to 3000 B.C.

In addition to some new civilizations appearing in this region there were
great changes in the old one. We must realize that in this single chapter we
are reviewing events spanning 1,500 years or a period equal to that from the
time of Christ to the Reformation in Europe. In a few limited ways, there
was actual regression in the Near East at this time as the local tin deposits
became exhausted and the area slipped back out of the Bronze Age.

THE ARABIAN PENINSULA

Nomadic Semitic tribes continued domination of the central areas of the
peninsula, while other Semitic empires controlled the fertile northwestern
region of Arabia and present day Jordan. About 2,250 B.C. the Akkadians
were extending their influence down into this area and some 400 years later
an Arabian tribe of Amorites began their first expansion and began to
overflow this entire area of the Fertile Crescent, rolling over into
Mesopotamia and beyond.

MEDITERRANEAN COASTAL AREAS OF ISRAEL AND
LEBANON

The ancient basic population of this area were Canaanites, originally
Semitic nomads who had early migrated north from Arabia, but in the
period under review, two other peoples appeared--the Jews and the
Phoenicians. (Ref. 175) Additional Notes

1. ISRAEL

Semitic speaking people lived a Bronze Age urban life in Palestine from
3,000 to 2,200 B.C. but then for two or three hundred years the city life
appears to have been destroyed by an invading nomadic people, probably
the Amorites from deep in the Arabian peninsula. After 1,900 B.C.
population returned to the urban areas and that period may then be
described as the true Canaanite era. The African camel was used in
Palestine for caravan trade by 1,600 B.C. The exact time of the arrival of
the Jews is debated. Their own tradition says that they came from Ur in
about 2,200 B.C., but they probably came up out of the Arabian Peninsula
somewhat later. They too, of course, were a Semitic group who rarely
intermarried with other stocks, yet some feel that they received their
characteristic nose from the non-Semitic Hittites. (Ref. 229) During these
early centuries the Jews remained as twelve more or less independent tribes,
with a state of civilization developing about 1,800 B.C. Most of them then
entered Egypt between 1,800 and 1,650 B.C. perhaps with their "cousins",
the Hyksos. It is said that Judaism was founded by Abraham, a prince of Ur,
living in Canaan in 1,700 B.C., as he replaced human sacrifice with
sacrifice of rams. (Ref. 18, 213, 222)

2. LEBANON (PHOENICIA)

The origin of the Phoenicians who founded the city of Tyre and settled
along a strip of coast one hundred miles long and ten miles wide, about
2,800 B.C. is not definitely known, but they may have been simply another
Semitic tribe from the region of the Persian Gulf. From 2,600 B.C. on, they
were the busiest merchants of the ancient world, manufacturing forms of
glass, working metal and producing a famous purple dye from
Mediterranean mollusca. The forest of Lebanon supplied the entire middle
east with timber and the incredibly durable Lebanon cedar allowed the early
Phoenicians, as well as the Hittites, to abandon the earlier papyrus reeds for
boats of wood. These people were shrewd traders, stealing from the weak,
cheating the stupid and dealing honestly with the rest of mankind. They
sailed the seas in seventy feet long, narrow galleys with oars and one large
rectangular sail, developing the art of navigation as they sailed from their
home cities of Tyre, Byblos and Sidon to develop a great colonial empire.
They were known in the Bible as Siddonians. Ugarit was a Canaanite and

Phoenician city which has been dubbed the "Shanghai of the mid-2nd
millenium B.C.", because it seemed a cross-road of world trade. Texts in
Sumerian-Akkadian, Hurrian, Egyptian and Hittite have been found there.
The oldest known alphabet was apparently native Canaanite, later improved
by the Phoenicians. Some texts show close association of Hebrews to
Canaanites before the time of Moses, and much of the moral teaching and
ideals of justice of later Hebrew pro- phets were foreshadowed here and
there are parallels to the later Biblical psalms, etc. (Ref. 95, 87)

The timber resources of Lebanon were already considerably depleted by
2,000 B.C. but they have continued to be exploited right down to the
present time. Olive oil, grain, grapes, sheep and cattle were products in
antiquity. Slaves had always been used some, but after 2,000 B.C. large
numbers were imported from Egypt, so that it was soon not uncommon for
households to have three. (Ref. 88, 213)

IRAQ AND SYRIA

1. MESOPOTAMIA, PROPER

The term "Sumerian" has been coined by scholars from the place name of
"Sumer" which by the third millennium was used to mean southern
Mesopotamia as apposed to Akkad, the northern part. Sumeria was a city
civilization and the important cities of Ur, Uruk, Larsa, Eridu and Kish had
populations ranging from 15,000 to 250,000. One or more temple
communities constituted a city, with priest administration and work-gangs
to operate the irrigation system. The land of the city was divided into
several categories, with some fields owned by the gods and worked on their
behalf, some fields rented out annually to individuals and others awarded to
individuals, rent-free.

The first dynasty of Ur has been dated archaeologically and historically
from the King- lists (royal genealogical tablets found on the site) to about
2,700 B.C., but there was a high civilization at Ur before this, perhaps with
the city functioning under the suzerainty of the Erech Dynasty. At least

what appears to have been a royal cemetery has been excavated, dated prior
to the first dynasty of Ur, in which the ritual of burial included human
sacrifice, varying from six to seventy or eighty people, sometimes including
asses and carts with grooms and various women's bodies. There was no
evidence of violence; the men and women sacrificial attendants probably
simply drank a drug and went quietly to sleep. Nothing like human sacrifice
was ever mentioned from the later Sumeria. At any rate, the actual,
historical first dynasty of Ur was that of Mes-an-ni-pad-da of about 2,700
B.C. and it lasted supposedly for 177 years. During the later part of this
time, at about 2,600 B.C. it had succeeded in conquering various
surrounding areas, under King Urukagina. This was followed by the
usurpation of neighboring Umma by King Lugalzaggesi. Situated on the flat
lands of the lower Euphrates, Sumer had no natural defenses and the cities
became tempting objects of plunder to the barbarous people around. About
2,300 B.C. Sumeria was conquered by the neighboring Akkadians under
their great leader, Sargon I. The Sumerian culture seemed to continue in the
new, combined empire, however, and a "Golden Age of Ur" resulted.
Sargon wrote of ships laden with goods in harbor at his capital and there
were caravans of 200 donkeys traveling 12 to 15 hours a day plying
between Armenia and Iraq. From 2,112 to 2,015 B.C. Ur remained the
capital of this great empire, ruled by the five kings of the third dynasty. Iraq
had a population of between four and five million at that time.

One of the characteristic features of each great Sumerian city was the
ziggurat and that of Ur has been the best preserved. It has been suggested
that if the Sumerians came originally from the Caucasus, one might assume
that they felt that their gods had to have a mountain to stand or live on, and
so they built the ziggurats, as substitutes. Ur was destroyed sometime after
2,000 B.C. and then for awhile it was under Isin lordship, then under the
city of Larsa and finally under the Elamites who came from south Persia.
The Elamite prince, Warad-Sin, who became king of Ur, rebuilt and
enlarged the temples of the ancient city and his successor, Rim-sin served as
king of Larsa also, and during his reign the population of the "old town" of
Ur, that is, within the original walls, included an estimated 4,250 houses,
probably with 34,000 people. The whole city, then, must have exceeded
250,000 and may have been twice that large. It was a manufacturing center
with raw materials imported, sometimes from overseas via the Persian Gulf.

Gold, copper ore, hard woods, ivory, pearls and precious stones were all
brought by ship and recorded in bills of lading. (Ref. 238, 28, 213)

But Ur was not to last much longer. Although there is still some
disagreement about dating, we shall assume that Hammurabi started his rule
in Babylon in 1,783 B.C. and then in the 12th year of the reign of his son,
Samsi-iluna, the Babylonians destroyed the walls of Ur with a terrible
thoroughness and laid waste to the city. Up until that time, all the tablets
and texts of Ur (and there were thousands of them) were written in the
Sumerian language (Caucasian?), but after that destruction the tablets were
in the Babylonian language. The invaders took over the cuneiform writing,
but the Sumerian language itself became a dead literary and religious
tongue. This fall of Sumeria may have been prepared in part by internal
disintegration and class wars within the city-state (Ref. 238, 28)

The conquering Babylonians were actually Amorites and the new
combination of Amorite-Akkadian-and non-Semitic Sumerian civilization
became known as the Babylonian[footnote], with the Semitic strain the
dominant one. Hammurabi had forged out this empire and put his capital at
Babylon. (Please note the map below).

As with the Hurrians and Mitannians to be discussed later, it is probable
that the Caucasian Kassites were led by an Aryan (Indo-European
aristocracy. (Ref. 45)

NOTE: Insert Map taken from Reference 97.

Agriculture thrived as great new irrigation canals were developed. The
Babylonians, of the same basic stock as Abraham and the later Hebrews, or
Jews, had the beginnings of astronomy and the ability to predict eclipses.
They had a calendar and could handle cubic equations with two unknowns.
The Babylonian society demonstrated the development of an imperial
political theory, an improved administrative technique, especially through
the use of written communication, the development of a bureaucracy and
professional army, and finally better methods of inter-city and inter-regional
trade, along with the promotion of an independent merchant class. A code
of laws, based on Sumerian prototypes, has become famous as the Code of
Hammurabi, put into effect about 1,750 B.C. This code covered most
ordinary life activities, even condemning ale houses for under-strength,

over-priced beer. Forty percent of the grain in some cities went to the
manufacture of beer. The code also regulated many medical fees for such
things as treating severe wounds, tumors, and broken bones. The fees were
high - for example, that for successfully treating a freeman's broken bone
was five shekels of silver, a value equal to the yearly rent for a middle-class
dwelling. But the punishments for poor medical treatment were equally
elevated. (Ref. 68, 220, 211, 125)

Sometime about 1,600 B.C. or perhaps slightly earlier, Babylonia was
conquered by a combined force of Aryan (McEvedy, [Ref. 136], says
Caucasian) Kassites1 from the east and Hittites from near Asia Minor. The
Hittites quickly withdrew, taking the Sumerian script with them, leaving the
Kassites to rule Babylonia for about six centuries. Some believe that they
brought the horse with them from the Samartian flatlands. On the other
hand, Lewinsohn (Ref. 122) says that riding horses were first mentioned in
historical records at the time of Hammurabi, about 2,000 B.C., although
chariots had been used earlier by Sumerian kings. As mentioned earlier,
Mesopotamia was the home of the spectacular, brick-built temple
monuments called "ziggurats", many having been built between 3,000 and
500 B.C. Among the first of these was one called the "White Temple",
probably dedicated to Amu, god of the sky, at ancient Uruk (Erech of the
Bible), capital of several Sumerian dynasties. It was built about 3,000 B.C.
on a platform forty feet high. Even the Kassites built ziggurats - the remains
of a spectacular one still some two hundred feet high, remains at Aquarquf,
the Kassite capital just west of Baghdad. (Ref. 136, 122, 176)

Additional Notes

2. SYRIA AND ADJACENT AREAS

Recent excavations in northwestern Syria between what was subsequently
Ugarit and Carchemish, indicate that a great empire with a capital city of
Ebla existed prior to and after the 23rd century B.C. Fifteen thousand
cuneiform tablets with commercial records, treaties and chronicles have
been found, written in a previously unknown Semitic language. This is four
times the number of all previously found texts of this period. It is evident

that metallurgy, textiles, ceramics and woodworking were well developed.
Thirty thousand people in the City were surrounded by about 250 million in
the immediate area.

More than five thousand geographic names appear, indicating far greater
settlement of the Near East at that ancient time than previously believed.
Beirut and Byblos, Damascus and Gaza, as well as Sodom and Gomorrah
are all mentioned. Some people named may be the Abraham, Esau and
Saul, of the Bible. The language and culture of Ebla may have survived in
such later Canaanite centers as Ugarit and even Palestine. Thriving by 2,400
B.C. (or even 2,500), Ebla's kings apparently contended with Sargon of
Akkad for domination of the Euphrates area. Sargon's grandson, Naram-
Sin, conquered Ebla, but it rose again, only to fall once more about 2,000
B.C., perhaps wiped out by the Amorites. Their language has been
identified as a forerunner of all the Canaanite dialects, which include
Ugaritic, Phoenician and Hebrew. Translation became possible because of
the finding of some dual language dictionaries, containing both Sumerian
and Eblaite. (Ref. 117)

At times war and at times periods of cooperation occurred with another
powerful city, Mari, about half-way down the Euphrates from Ebla to
Babylon. The French excavations at Mari show a royal palace of three
hundred rooms and courts and evidence of Egyptian trade. At one time Mari
was ruled by Shura-Damu, son of Ebrium who had been probably Ebla's
greatest king. These kings were elected and Ebrium had served four terms
of seven years each. (Ref. 117)

To the northwest were the Assyrians who began to rise as a militant power
by 1,700 B.C. and to the southwest, between the Assyrians and the
Egyptians, was another Semitic tribe which was originally a Bedouin group
appearing from the Syrian desert and whose descendants are today's true
Syrians. They may have been pushed north and east as the Hyksos were
expelled from Egypt. They made Damascus their chief city. Of greatest
importance, however, was the migration of the Amorites who came out of
the desert about 2,100 B.C. to take over most of the entire area, including
the city of Babylon and then the entire Euphrates Valley. (Please see
paragraphs above on Mesopotamia, proper.)

Finally, coming out of their original homeland east and north of Lake Van
(Armenia) as early as the late 3rd millennium B.C. were an Asianic-
speaking people called Hurrians, who settled in large numbers in northern
Syria and Mesopotamia. Although the Hurrians, themselves, may well have
been of the old, original Caucasian race, they apparently had an aristocracy
of Indo-European origin called "Mitanni". By 1,600 B.C. they had a series
of kingdoms. Some authorities believe that they introduced the horse and
chariot to the Near East as war vehicles. What is often called the Mitanni
Kingdom was actually a federation of Hurrian states under the kings of
Wahukanni. At one period, King Tushratta captured and held the stone
capital of Assyria, Nineveh. (Ref. 136, 45)

IRAN (PERSIA)

The Bronze Age on the plateau of central Iran began about 3,000 B.C. A
basic agricultural economy was soon augmented by export of lapis lazuli
from the northeast and steatite (soapstone) from the southeast. The metal
industry followed that of Elam and Babylonia. The Elamite civilization with
its capital at Susa continued to flourish in a limited geographical area and
their antagonisms and military vigor were manifested in their raids of
Sumer. The Mitanni and the Hurrians lived in parts of northern Iran before
their migrations into northern Syria. Writings appeared early in Persia,
notably in the region of Elam, where the cultural relations were closer to
Mesopotamia than to the remainder of Persia. Elamites also had indirect
trade with Egypt. (Ref. 18, 45)

The linguist, Pei (Ref. 168), believes that the Indo-European peoples and
their basic language originated by about 2,500 B.C. either on the Iranian
plateau or about the Baltic Sea, while Wells (Ref. 229) would put the date
several thousand years earlier (See also Eastern Europe). McEvedy (Ref.
136) indicates a southern Russia and lower central Asian origin around the
Aral Sea, with these early Indo-Europeans, which he labels "Iranians", as
beginning migrations from central Asia down into Iran by 2,250 B.C. and
even pushing into Syria by 1,600 B.C. Their gray Gurgan pottery is found at
the excavation site of Tepe Hissar just south and east of the Caspian Sea.
These same Iranians spread across central Asia, becoming the base

population of the steppe, while another segment moved south, eventually
invading India. As the Iranians stormed into the Middle East at the end of
the time period under review, they were accompanied by clans of the
Caucasian Kassites and Hurrians, with war chariots. (Please also see
Europe: 5000 to 3000 B.C.). (Ref. 168, 229, 136, 88)

ASIA MINOR (ANCIENT ANATOLIA)

Prehistoric copper cultures have been validated by excavations of Troy
(3,000-2,400) and Alishar Huyuk (3,000-2,800). As these great copper
supplies were developed, the axis of history began to shift to this
Mediterranean region and away from Mesopotamia. About 3,000 B.C. there
were a Series of local early Bronze Age cultures, including the Yortan
Culture of northwest Anatolia, which had close relationships to the
Cycladic Culture of the Aegean, and the first Troy (Kisarlik). The Trojan
artisans learned to toughen copper by alloying it with small amounts of tin
by about 3,000 but the source of this tin is un- known. Regional divisions in
the peninsula became quite marked with each controlled by a native dynasty
and metropolitan centers soon became quite wealthy. (Ref. 88) By 2,000
B.C. the Assyrians had trading posts in the area, such as at Kanesh (modern
Kultepe) where the form of certain names in tablets indicates the arrival of
an Indo-European speaking people, the Hittites. By 1,750 B.C. the latter
had become a dominant military caste, controlling important cities. They
may actually have appeared first some five hundred years earlier, settling in
the bend of the Halys River, but their origin is much disputed.

Traditionally they have been described as coming down from the region of
the Caspian Sea, but more recent studies would suggest that they had origin
from the Aegean Sea peoples and came at this period from the shores of
Greece and the Aegean Islands, along with their kinsmen, the Luvians (also
Luwians). The Hittite migration was only the central component in a trio of
displacements. From north of the Black Sea the Usatove were moving into
the Balkan area and at the base of the Anatolian peninsula the Caucasian
Khirbet Kerak were moving down into Syria and even into Palestine. These
people have also been called Hattites and represent the original population
of Anatolia.

The Hittite language had declensional and conjugational forms similar to
both Latin and Greek and some of their simple words were visibly akin to
modern English, such as:

e Vadar - water, and
e Essa - eat.

The Hittites had sharp, aquiline noses and Wells (Ref. 229) felt that they
had fused sufficiently with the early Hebrews to give the latter this nose as a
trademark. The basic population of Turkey, today, also has this physical
feature. The Hittites had iron and used it.

Their society was probably related in some way to the Sumerian and many
of their customs were similar. Politically they had a warrior aristocracy, but
they also had art, religion and writing, all exhibiting close affinities with
Mesopotamian models. The first known rulers of the old Hittite Kingdom
were Labarnas and his son Hattusilis II. In 1,595 B.C., under Muresilis I,
they conquered Babylon. The Luvians, related to the Hittites, had
penetrated Asia Minor during the latter part of the 3rd millennium B.C. and
were soon active in the west with a principal city of Beycesultan on the
River Meander. That city was destroyed in 1,750 B.C., perhaps by the
Hittite King Labarnas I.

East of the Hittites was the area of ancient Armenia, known in that time as
"Urartu" and in some places in the Bible as "Ararat". The people we call
"Armenians" today, however, probably did not arrive until at least the 8th
century B.C. Even in the early time of the third millennium the overland
trade routes of traders to the steppes of Asia crisscrossed this land, and the
indigenous population was skilled in the secrets of ancient metallurgy. In at
least the later part of the period under survey, the basic population of Urartu
was comprised of the non-Semitic, probably Caucasian, Hurrian and Vannic
peoples. (Ref. 136, 45, 88)

Note:Jemmeh, mentioned previously in a note on page 1183, was
reoccupied with a Midole Bronze settlement about 1,800 B.C. (Ref. 295)

Note:It should be noted that Sargon I and his 54,000 men plundered all of
Mesopotamia around Kish, devastating the countryside to the east, thereby
preventing another army from going through until the population and crops
had been restored. (Ref. 279) It was in the Mesopotamia area that the two-
wheeled chariot was invented about 1,800 B.C. as a result of the
development of spoked wheels with a friction-reducing hub and axle
design. The compound bow was also developed so that mobility and fire
power in war were greatly increased. The steppe people were best able to
take advantage of this and between 1800 and 1500 B.C. waves of barbarian
charioteers overran the Middle East. At the same time rich merchants were
using donkey caravans to move tin eastward and textiles westward, from
the Persian Gulf to Anatolia, with profits up to 100% in a year. (Ref. 279)

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THE ARABIAN PENINSULA
Back to The Near East: 3000 to 1500 B.C.

There were multiple nomadic tribes in the Arabian Peninsula and very dry
areas were opened for settlement by the use of lime plaster for watertight
cisterns. In present day Jordan, Ammon became the capital of the
Ammonite tribe and legend has it that this city was conquered by the Judean
King David. The Aramic-speaking Arameans lived primarily around
Palmyra and with their camels they began to attack the "fertile crescent" to
the north and east. At about 1,000 B.C. they began to migrate east to
Babylonia, north toward Asia Minor and west to Damascus. Their relatives,
the Chaldeans, began to emerge from central Arabia and also started toward
Babylon, and more particularly toward Ur, in Sumer. (Ref. 8)

MEDITERRANEAN COASTAL AREAS OF ISRAEL AND
LEBANON

About 1,500 B.C. an entirely new type of writing was recorded for the first
time, in the Sinai Peninsula. This was an alphabet in which each sign
represented one consonant. It soon spread among the Phoenicians and other
Semites on the coast. Although originally written in a cuneiform, the
Phoenicians later replaced it with letters which could be written faster on
paper. The derivation of various mid-eastern scripts is as follows: Note:
Insert chart from p107

ISRAEL: PALESTINE: JUDEA

Peoples of Semitic speech occupied Palestine in successive waves,
including Amorites, Hebrews, Israelites and Arabs. Egypt, under
Thutmoses III, conquered Palestine in 1,479 B.C. and controlled the area
almost continuously thereafter in this period under review. This is probably
the time of the "Exodus" of the Jews from Egypt back to the "Promised

Land" in the vicinity of Palestine. The true history of their long migration
back and the trials and tribulations with other tribes along the way and in
the regions of Judea and Palestine are mixed with legend and myth in the
Old Testament, which was written much later. Saul became the first king of
the Jews in 1,025 B.C. and supposedly David became king in 1,010 B.C.
Unfortunately there is no contemporary mention of this in any literature
except the Bible and the later Greek historian, Procopius. Throughout this
era the Jews were dominated by the Philistines who were probably refugees
from the collapsing Cretan civilization, or were Luvians, or both. In one
battle, dated at 1,141 B.C. by Trager (Ref. 222), the Israelites lost 4,000
men and later lost another 30,000. The Philistine invasion was a part of the
Sea Peoples raids which plagued the entire Mediterranean coast at that
period. (Ref. 88) Additional Notes

LEBANON: PHOENICIA

The Phoenicians, as a people, cannot be differentiated from the general
mass of Canaanites until sometime in this 2nd half of the 2nd millennium
B.C., but by 1,200 they had liberated themselves from Egyptian domination
and they soon became the true masters of the Mediterranean seaways,
sailing to Italy, Spain and all along the coast of north Africa. They may
even have sailed around the continent of Africa. Present day Beirut,
however, was still subject to the Amorites at that time. The importance of
their alphabetic script is indicated in the chart above.

IRAQ AND SYRIA

BABYLONIA (MESOPOTAMIA)

Babylonia, on the lower two-thirds of the Tigris and Euphrates, remained
throughout these five hundred years chiefly under Kassite rule and there
was little progress in civilization except during the reign of the Kassite
king, Kurigalzu II, who was a great builder. He constructed innumerable
monuments, not only in Ur, but in other southern cities. No one knows the
reason for this sudden spurt of industry, but the growing signs of strength in

neighboring Assyria and Mitanni and in the area of the Hittites may have
been a factor. Unfortunately none of the Kassite monuments were
particularly artistic. As mentioned in the last chapter, these people were
probably a mixed body of warriors with at least two linguistic elements, an
original Caucasian and an Indo-European. The Kassites were overthrown
by raiding Elamites in 1,157 B.C. and the previously great city of Ur then
sank into obscurity for at least three or four centuries. (Ref. 238)

ASSYRIA

To the north and west of Babylonia, proper, the Assyrians were
accumulating in an increasing number of city-states, at first just in the area
immediately around Nineveh, Memrud, Arbil and Asher. In 1,244 B.C.,
however, Tukulti-Ninurta took over a great deal of old Babylon and
apparently contested with the Kassites for most of Mesopotamia, so that the
latter were squeezed between these invaders and the raiding Elamites from
the east. By 1,115 B.C. the Assyrian Tiglath-Pileser I had lost some territory
on the lower Tigris but had gained a precarious corridor to the
Mediterranean north of Damascus, between Arwad and Sidon.

NOTE: Insert Illustration - Map Reference 97

Up to 1,380 B.C. various Mitannian lords had been dominant in that area,
but after Shalmaneser I united the Assyrian states under one central rule, the
Mitannians were kept in a small kingdom just to the west of Assyria. The
Assyrians were a mixture of warrior Semites from the south, non-Semitic
tribes of Hittite and/or Mittanian origin from the west and Kurds from the
Caucasus. They used a common language taken from Sumer, but modified
it to practical similarity with Babylonian. Multiple languages persisted,
however, making work difficult for the scribes, so that those of

Ugarit[ footnote] finally reduced the repertory of signs for their own
language down to thirty.

Ugarit, on the Syrian coast, was the great Canaanite capital. Excavated by
the French in 1921, the city is thought to have contained about 10,000
people with a highly developed sanitation system. It had a library of
cuneiform tablets. (Ref. 115)

Prior to 1,250 B.C. there had been a great struggle for control of the
Assyrian lands, which was the same area that has been known with
variations in its borders, throughout history chiefly as Syria, including the
cities of Byblos and Damascus. The struggle for control by Egypt, the
Hittites, the Ugarits, Babylonians and Mitannis, all using essentially the
Babylonian language and chariotry, occurred because Syria was the junction
for all trade routes between the East, Asia Minor, the Aegean and Egypt.
From 1,500 to 1,400

B.C. the Mitanni intermittently controlled all north Syria and Cilicia but
from 1,380 to 1,346 the Hittites cut them off and dominated the region.
After 1,200 B.C. there were waves of barbarian invasions which included
the Hebrews, Philistines and Arameans, as well as the Sea People,
Chaldeans and Medes. By the 12th century B.C. the dominant people in
Syria were the Arameans, who became the greatest inland traders and
whose language became the paramount commercial tongue. Damascus, at
the end of the major caravan route across the desert, became the most
important city of the region. (Ref. 8, 118, 28)

IRAN: PERSIA

In the northern and western parts of Persia, cultural traditions were broken
about 1,300 B.C. with the appearance of monochrome, polished pottery
along with the definitive Iron Age, and the arrival from the northeast of the
Indo-European languages, as the Medes and Persians migrated down from
areas of central Asia. In the southwest, Elam continued as a more or less
independent state with a high cultural level which reached its height from
1,300 to 1,100 B.C., reaching a special peak under Untash-Gal. The largest
surviving ziggurat in the world, some 170 feet high with five levels, is at
Tchoga Zanbil, some eighteen miles from Susa, the ancient capital of Elam.
In the middle of the 12th century B.C. Elam had a brief expansion into the
Dujala area and eastern Assyria (old Mesopotamia), when the leaders were
probably seeking to gain control of the Zagros trade routes. The Elamites
had a glass technology and cast bronze. (Ref. 18, 18, 176, 8)

ASIA MINOR: ANATOLIA

The famous Trojan War, formerly considered only an Homerian legend,
probably actually occurred about 1,200 B.C. with Agamemnon leading the
Mycenean Greek forces against Troy. Homer said that the Thracians, led by
King Rhesus, came to the Trojans' aid, and it is known that at that time the
Mycenaeans did assume power over all the eastern Mediterranean. Hittite
and Egyptian chronicles seem to confirm this. Farther inland the Hittites,
under their greatest king, Shubbiluliu (also Suppiluliumas) reconquered
central Anatolia and northern Syria and reduced the Mitanni to a small
vassal kingdom by about 1,350 B.C. and all north Syria was under their
control by 1,340. In 1,250 they forced Ramses II of Egypt to acknowledge
their king as his equal. Carchemish, in Syria, was one of the more important
of the smaller Hittite states, and the people were the Hittites mentioned in
the Bible. At that time, what little iron was available in the world was in the
Hittite Anatolian kingdom, but it was worth forty times its weight in silver.
In fact, it is said that the Chalybes, a sub-tribe of the Hittites, even made
steel bars by about 1,400 B.C., using them in limited quantities for knives
and swords. (Ref. 213, page 282) The Hittite language is the earliest
documented Indo European tongue and was written usually in cuneiform
script borrowed from Mesopotamia about 1,500 B.C. The capital city,
Hattusas, was protected by a massive, dry stone wall three and three-
quarters miles around. Some of the stones were as large as twenty-six by
twenty feet. When this capital was mysteriously sacked about 1,190 B.C.,
the brick houses of Hattuses were subjected to such intense heat that the
bricks fused. It should be realized that the Hittites had access to the same
Lebanese cedar forests as the Phoenicians and that they built elaborate
wooden ships even before the latter. Ancient Hittite seals indicate that they
also built reed ships. Remarkable conformities exist if one compares the
early Hittite civilization and the early Olmec civilization at La Venta,
Mexico. The similarities include motifs and technique of highly specialized
ceramic effigy jars, stone statues with inlaid shell and obsidian eyes, adobe
mounds, a solar deity sculpted with a feather crown and a body half serpent
and half bird (plumed serpent) and some hieroglyphics - completely
different from other middle eastern scripts. (Ref. 45, 136, 215, 95)

At the end of the 13th and in the 12th century B.C. part of the Hittite
territory was taken over by the upsurging Sea People and in the 11th
century, the Assyrians took over the rest, so that the Hittite civilization, as

such, died out or was absorbed in the next few hundreds of years. Phrygean
invaders from Thrace, and Luvians, may have played a major part in this
destruction of the Hittite Empire. As the political entity collapsed, however,
these ironsmiths of Anatolia then spread far and wide, taking their iron
weapons with them so that their culture actually survived in neo-Hittite
kingdoms, particularly in north Syria near Carchemish. (Ref. 45)

Still farther east, in Urartu, also known as the Kingdom of Van and later as
Armenia, the Hurrian and Vannic peoples (related to the Mitanni) whose
languages were related continued their own high level civilization.

Note:Jemmeh was a part of the New Kingdom of Egypt and between 1450
and 1200 B.C. was occupied by Canaanites. The city had a very large
house or palace measuring 19.2 meters by 16.5 meters, with a paved
courtyard. There was a large amount of imported pottery from Mycenaea,
Greece and Cyprus. When the Sea Peoples arrived, they actually occupied
and settled many coastal towns, including Ashdod, Ashkelon, Gaza, Ekron
and Gath. (Ref. 295)

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The Near East: 1000 to 700 B.C.

THE NEAR EAST

Back to The Near East: 1500 to 1000 B.C.

THE ARABIAN PENINSULA

North and south Arabia presented two separate ethnic groups, separated by
a vast central desert. The northerners were nomads, but the south had an
advanced culture with urban living, a high social organization, a unique
irrigational system and a relatively advanced technology. Several kingdoms
existed, such as the Minaean and Sabaean (Yemen). The Queen of Sheba,
also called Queen Balkis, supposedly came from the latter country. It is
generally supposed that this Queen, who has really never been further
identified, came from the land of Sheba, or Yemen, yet there is no historical
mention of the culture of the nation of Sheba until about two centuries after
the Queen allegedly visited Solomon in Palestine. Exploration and
excavation of that area of Yemen has been hindered by Islamic attitudes, for
Sheba was cursed by the Prophet Mohammed as a pagan land, and all
recent attempts at excavations have been totally thwarted by the present
Moslem inhabitants. At the time of the legendary visit of the Queen of
Sheba to Palestine, Solomon's power was at its peak. His garrisons
controlled all the roads from the Euphrates to the Sinai and from the Red
Sea to Palmyra. His army included 12,000 horsemen and 1,400 war
chariots.

Camels, which had been used by the Arameans for a long time, came into
common domestic use about 1,000 B.C. and became more and more
important for desert trade routes and war. Four camels can carry a ton of
merchandise and go for three days without water, covering twenty-five
miles a day. A major camel route from Yemen to Palestine via Hejaz carried
Arabia's resins (myrrh, frankincense and balsam) used in perfumes, incense
and medicines, but also must have carried re-exported goods from East
Africa and India. The trip required nearly three months by the coastal route.

The nomad camel drivers of that era enjoyed a dish of camel hair and blood,
mixed and cooked. Marib was the capital of Sabaea, one of the city-states of
north Yemen which acquired wealth and power from this camel traffic. An
irrigation dam, perhaps built there in that period lasted more than a
thousand years. The natives of Sheba, Ma'in, Agtaban and Hazarmoth were
Semites from the north, worshiping the sun, the moon and Venus, which
they called Ashtar, and their government was similar to that of Sumer. They
were geographically isolated and tough. The city of Amman, in Jordan,
gained independence from Solomon in the 10th century B.C., but 200 years
later Jordan, as a whole, was conquered by the Assyrians. (Ref. 176, 136,
211, 83)Additional Notes

MEDITERRANEAN COASTAL AREAS OF ISRAEL AND
LEBANON

The shore line of the Mediterranean assumed great importance in this
period of world history, as several separate centers of civilization developed
as the probable forerunners of our own civilization. The promotion of
Hebrew monotheism forecasted the later development of Christianity, and
the rise of the Greek Culture was the dawn of the Greek-Roman world
which eventually took over that Christianity and bequeathed it to the
western world. Professor Toynbee (Ref. 220) feels that the Phoenicians,
Israelites and Syrians of that age, along with the Philistine refugees from
the Cretan world and Hebrew nomads from Arabia, all together formed a
separate and distinct society which he called the Syriac. He feels that it was
the parent society of both western Christendom and the Islamic Society of
later years. This is an interesting theory and convenient, but others do not
associate these communities in this way. Toynbee dates the beginning of the
breakdown of this group to the death of Solomon, but claims that it
continued on to the Universal State in the 6th century B.C. under the
Babylonian Nebuchadrezzar.

NOTE: Insert Map from Reference 97

ISRAEL: PALESTINE

Solomon slew all rival claimants to the throne of Judea, including his half-
brother, and became king of the Jews from 974 to 937 B.C. Rich copper
mines found near the Red Sea and Phoenician merchant trade helped the
treasury and gold mining in Arabia allegedly promoted through the Queen
of Sheba, was an extra boon. The Phoenicians, in exchange for access to the
Red Sea and some twenty Galilean towns, brought technical expertise to
Israel. At a place on the Gulf of Aqaba (perhaps modern Elat), the
Phoenicians constructed the long distance boats which were their specialty
and mounted joint trading expeditions with the Israelites. Wood for the
boats came from Lebanon's great cedars and was floated by sea to Jaffe. As
an incidental note, Solomon amassed several tons of gold each year, so
much that he covered the walls of his great temple with it. Although in
many ways unprincipled and with an alleged 700 wives (his first was the
daughter of the pharaoh of Egypt) and 300 concubines, he had only one
God, Yahweh. There is much confusion about the origin of Yahweh - he
may have been one and the same with the Canaan god Yahu, dating back in
that tribe to 3,000 B.C. who, taken over by the Hebrews was re-created in
their own likeness, or it is possible that the "God Abraham" was a house-
hold god brought from ancient Ur, while the "God Moses" may have
originated separately, with a fusion of these two accomplished later by Jews
who did not come from Egypt. At any rate, Yahveh originally was a god of
the desert and war, and could never easily be reconciled with an agricultural
deity. Shortly after Solomon's death his son, Rehoboam, refused to reduce
the terribly high taxes and ten northern tribes revolted to form a new nation
of Israel around the city of Samaria. Two southern tribes remained at
Jerusalem as the nation of Judah. Ephraim (today this is in Jordan) became
the capital of the northern country and Jerusalem the capital of Judea
(Judah). (Ref. 46, 28, 176)

Judea was soon conquered by the Libyan rulers of Egypt. A hundred years
later King Shab, of Israel, held off the Assyrians at Qargar (853 B.C.) but in
another century the Assyrians destroyed adjacent Samaria and besieged
Jerusalem, taking 200,000 Jews captive. These were the so-called "Lost
Tribes of Israel". Sargon II actually carried out the deportation which was
previously ordered by his predecessor, Tiglath Pileser III[footnote]. In this

atmosphere of political disruption, economic war and religious
degeneration, the Jewish prophets appeared. They were radical, anti-clerical
and socialistic. The first was Amos (750 B.C.) followed by Hosea (740
B.C.) who denounced the Israelites for the worship of gods other than
Yahweh. Amos and Isaiah, who appeared in 702 B.C., may be considered as
the beginning of both Christianity and socialism, the "...spring from which
has flowed a stream of Utopias..."[ footnote] In this period Judah kept some
independence but as a vassal state of Assyria. Biblical Hebrew medical
ideas were drawn chiefly from the adjacent Mediterranean concepts. They
believed in supernatural causation of disease although they did not envision
a world filled with demons and spirits at that time. Hygienic laws were
enforced for religious and disciplinary rather than medical reasons, and
these regulations reached into almost every corner of daily living. The
taboo on pork was probably not hygienic or medicinal but simply because
pigs competed with humans for the scarce grain and water, while sheep and
cattle drank little water and ate only grass. Many of the alleged leprosy
cases of the Bible were probably other skin diseases. Some medicines were
mentioned in the Bible - mandrake, balsams, gums, oils, and possibly
narcotics. No surgery was mentioned except the ritual circumcision.
Physicians were taken from the priestly tribe of Levites, and were
apparently held in high esteem. (Ref. 125)

Biblical reference II Kings XV, 29 on 134

Durant (Ref. 46), page 319

LEBANON: PHOENICIA
(Please see map in connection with GREECE, this chapter)

This was a period of great wealth and territorial expansion for the
Phoenicians. King Hiram, of the city of Tyre, had friendly relations with the
Hebrew kings and, as we have noted, entered into many trade agreements
with them. The Phoenicians developed an overseas empire, including
colonies on Cyprus, the Aegean islands, in Spain and at Carthage in north
Africa, carrying and teaching their alphabet to the nations of antiquity and
disseminating the use of papyrus. Their settlement at Gades (later Cadiz,
Spain) gave them access to the gold, silver and copper from Tartessus. They

exported ivory carvings, silver-work, colored glass and fine fabrics. They
are said to be the first people who were able to navigate by the stars, sail
beyond the sight of land and at night and to voyage on the seas in winter-
time. It is to be recalled that these people were probably basically
Canaanites and their chief object of worship was the goddess Ishtar, who
subsequently became the Greek goddess Astarte. The British Museum has
some excellent Phoenician ivory carvings of this period. (Ref. 18, 19, 75)

IRAQ AND SYRIA

Just over the mountains from Phoenicia the Semitic Syrians had been
developing an advanced civilization with a capital at Damascus. Although
dominated during the three hundred years of this time period by the
Assyrians, the true Syrians were a separate people, with their own culture
perhaps more closely related to the Phoenicians and Israelites than to their
neighbors to the north and east. They worshipped Astarte and also Adonis,
who regularly arose from the dead. The Assyrian conquests so gutted
northern Syria, however, that the area subsequently remained unimportant
for the next 400 years. The Assyrians attacked in waves. Under
Ashurnasirpal IT and his son, Shalmaneser IIT (883-824 B.C.) they pushed
through to take the entire eastern Mediterranean down to Palestine and
northward to the Taurus, which was important as a trade route to Europe
and as a source of metals, and then south toward Damascus where they
came into conflict with the Arameans and their allies in Israel. (Ref. 8)
Soon Damascus itself was conquered by Shalmanesar IV, who was followed
after an interval by Tiglath-Pileser III. He then reconquered Armenia,
northern Syria, Babylonia and overall extended the Assyrian rule from the
Caucasus to Egypt. Their military roads actually facilitated trade by the
native Aramean-Syrians who spread their language and fostered a
cosmopolitan culture in the middle east. The last of the wild elephants of
Syria were killed off in this period, although tusks were still imported from
Africa and perhaps India, for carving. (Ref. 45)

As implied above, ancient Babylonia passed from Kassite to Assyrian
control early in this period, but by about 900 B.C., the Chaldeans, who were
simply one group of Arameans, began to infiltrate the region and

eventually, with help, the Chaldean aristocracry threw out the Assyrians.
*** (Page 1185) Additional Notes

IRAN: PERSIA

In the early part of this first millennium B.C. the people of western Iran
were hassled by Assyria and Urartu as well as by raiding Scythians from the
north. At about this time, the Indo-European Medes began to migrate down
into Iran from just east of the Caspian and by the ninth century B.C. they
started toward Assyria, Babylonia and Elam, as the latter still controlled
southern Iran.

ASIA MINOR: ANATOLIA

The Hittite Empire slowly crumbled, pushed from the southeast by the
Assyrians and from the west by the Phrygians, newly arrived from Thrace.
The last Hittite capital at Carchemish fell to the Assyrians in 717 B.C. But
meanwhile the Phrygians with their most famous king, Midas, with a capital
city of Gordium (near modern Ankara), contended with Assyria and Egypt
for master of the Near East. They worshipped the goddess Cybele and the
young god Atys, who like Adoni, annually died and was resurrected, in the
inevitable pattern of the mid-east. At the close of the 8th century B.C.,
bands of Cimmerian horsemen from the steppe of southern Russia raided
far and wide in Asia Minor, eventually destroying the Phrygian nation. The
Lydians, living between the Cayster and the Hermus rivers were able to
repel the invaders and soon took over the entire area. (Ref. 28)

In Urartu in the east, the Hurrian (Vannic) nation recovered from earlier
waves of Assyrian attacks and about 800 B.C. became a very powerful
nation known as the Urartian Kingdom with Mount Ararat as its center.
Recent excavations near Altinepe, Turkey, have revealed architecture and
art that have left heritages in later public buildings in Persia and metallurgy
that perhaps had influence as far away as the Etruscan civilization of Italy.
(Ref. 161) They demonstrated great engineering skill in irrigation works.

Prosperous under a succession of kings from Sarduri I (840 B.C.) to Rusa I
(714 B.C.), Urartu attained its greatest geographical extent in the reign of
Sarduri IT (764-735 B.C.), with territory from the Black Sea to the
Mediterranean. The "Golden Age" may have occurred under Argistis II
(708 B.C.) when the country grew rich by mining iron and selling it to Asia
and Greece. Some authorities feel that this was the century when the
Armenians, who eventually gave their name to this area, migrated across
the Euphrates and intermarried with the indigenous Vans and Hurrians.
Ozguc (Ref. 161), however, dates that migration to the next, 7th century
B.C. At the end of this period, the Hurrian nation was weakened by
combined Assyrian pressure and invasion of migrating Cimmerian hordes
from east of the Black Sea. (Ref. 8)

Note: Assyrian documents of 854 B.C. tell how Gindibu, with 1,000 camel
riders from the "Land of the "Aribi" aided the King of Damascus against
the Assyrian King Shalmaneser II at the battle of Karkor. Overland traffic
with camels north and south in the peninsula became safer than water
traffic on the Red Sea, with its off-shore islands and reefs and vicious
pirates. Small cities near oases or spring-fed wells grew into international
centers, rich in goods and culture in this first millennium B.C. An example
— Taima in the north, where a religious reformer, Nabonidus, moved from
Babylon and built a great palace. The city was surrounded by seven miles
of wall. (Ref. 315)

Note:The fundamental administrative devices for the exercise of imperial
power were developed by the Assyrians and these subsequently remained
fairly standard in the Middle East up to the 19th century. The Assyrians,
rather than the steppe nomads, may have pioneered cavalry in the use of
paired horsemen, with one rider holding both sets of reins so that the
second rider could use both hands for his bow. (Ref. 279)

Forward to The Near East: 700 to 601 B.C.

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The Near East: 700 to 601 B.C.

THE NEAR EAST

Back to The Near East: 1000 to 700 B.C.

THE ARABIAN PENINSULA

Northern Arabia and the region of present day Jordan were completely
under the control of the Assyrians, but independent civilizations continued
in the south, with regular camel caravans traveling to Egypt and to other
parts of north Africa. As noted above, Yemen was actually overpopulated
and many families migrated to Ethiopia. (Ref. 83)

Additional Notes

MEDITERRANEAN COASTAL AREAS OF ISRAEL AND
LEBANON

For a short time the Assyrians controlled the entire eastern Mediterranean
shore, but after losing thousands of men with a disease (see Iraq), they
retreated to the region of Syria. In Palestine Josiah became king in 639 B.C.
and launched a campaign to purify the religion of Yahweh and to repress all
traces of other cults. The Pentateuch, a code of laws designed to re-
invigorate the moral life of the nation, was started in 621 B.C. This code
supported the prophets by embodying the less extreme of their ideas. To
facilitate the acceptance of this, according to Durant (Ref. 46), the elders,
with Josiah's permission, conveniently "found" a scroll allegedly from
Moses himself. This was the Book of the Covenant which is probably part
of the Biblical book of Exodus or Deuteronomy. It is interesting to note that
the prophets Amos and Isaiah had never mentioned Moses.

At the end of the century Judea was overrun by the Egyptians, under Necho,
as they started to attack the Assyrians. Only four years later, in 605 B.C.,

however, the Chaldeans of the second Babylonian Empire soundly defeated
the Egyptians at Carchemish, Syria, and Judah then passed under
Babylonian rule. (Ref. 46)

IRAQ AND SYRIA

The Assyrians, under King Sennacherib, sacked and destroyed Babylon in
689 B.C. and then proceeded under their General Esarhaddon to the borders
of Egypt where, according to the Bible (Il Kings), a pestilence struck
producing "an hundred four-score and five thousand" corpses, and the
survivors retreated to Nineveh. Ashurbinipal became king in 669 B.C. and
led Assyria to the climax of its wealth and prestige, destroying Elam in the
process. In this reign, the governor of Ur was one Sin-balatsu-iqbi who
decided to restore the ancient city, and much was accomplished even though
later archeologists say that his brick work was the worst that they
encountered in the many strata at Ur. (Ref. 238) King Ashurbanipal was
also the first book collector of history, accumulating in this 7th century B.C.
a library of 25,000 clay tablets, some of them already 3,000 or more years
old, including some medical "books" of ancient Sumer and Akkadia, written
in primitive ideographs. In many ways the Assyrians had an advanced
civilization, producing, for example, many great engineering feats for that
time. Their military might was in great part based on iron weapons,
particularly the iron-capped battering ram. They had excellent roads and
communications. King Sennacherib had constructed a 919 feet long stone
aqueduct to carry a canal across a valley and then continued with a six mile
long canal to bring water for his orchards and parks. Palaces had lavatories
and bathrooms as modern as some even today in parts of Europe. (Ref. 213)
In the end, however, the military activity consumed so much manpower that
local production atrophied and all vitals had to be imported. The constant
warfare had also killed off the strongest and bravest men, and the biological
type was undermined. The captive peoples bred and became a disintegrating
force from within. In 612 B.C. an army of Chaldean nomads (an Aramaic
people) under General Napopollaser, with the help of some Scythians and
Medes, defeated the Assyrians in a great battle at Nineveh and the latter
disappeared from history. These Chaldeans founded the second Babylonian
Empire which controlled Mesopotamia until well into the next century. It

was their General Nebuchadrezzar who defeated the expanding Egyptians at
Carchemish in 605, giving them access to all the old Assyrian lands in Syria
and Palestine. By 600 B.C. Babylon was the greatest walled city that the
world has ever known, and Nebuchadressar had built it.

In this same period, between about 630 and 610 B.C. still another people
appeared in this area. These were the Indo-European Scythians who raided
down through Syria, destroying and killing as they went. Their raids were
for plunder only and no settlements were made. (Ref. 45, 238, 15)

NOTE: Insert Map from Reference 97. (7. THE EAST)

IRAN

In eastern Iran the Indo-European speaking Medes were growing in
numbers and power in an independent kingdom. Their greatest king,
Cyaxares, started his reign in 640 B.C. but he had his hands full fighting off
the Assyrians in the west and the horse-riding Scythians who periodically
descended on them from central Asia, often defeating them

ARMENIA

In the eastern part of the Anatolian peninsula, Urartu (or the Kingdom of
Van), after being conquered by the Assyrians, made common cause for
awhile with the Scythians and under Rusa II (685-645 B.C.) successfully
raided for slaves along the Assyrian frontier as these slaves were the
essential foundation of their economy. The kingdom continued to prosper
under Sarduri III and briefly under Rusa II until 609 B.C. when the
Scythians turned on them and sacked the imperial city on Lake Van, while
the Medes crushed the Assyrians nearby. Thus the Kingdom of Urartu came
to an end about 600 B.C. The true Armenians were probably a Phrygian
tribe which gradually occupied the territory of Urartu perhaps not until after
612 B.C. They initially adopted the religion of the Persians and were under
the kings of Media for a time. (Ref. 160, 18)

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NOUR WNE

Note:The rich, well watered area of Yemen, which was then called "Arabia
Felix", produced a distinctive Arabic script about 700 B.C.

The Near East: 600 to 501 B.C.

THE NEAR EAST
Back to The Near East: 700 to 601 B.C.

Three peoples of the Near East had absolute monarchies in this century - the
Lydians, Medes and the Babylonians. Please see map this section, last
chapter.

THE ARABIAN PENINSULA

Incense and myrrh (made from gum resin) were now fashionable as
offerings to the gods, and they were produced in south Arabia and sent to
the Mediterranean. The Sabeans of Yemen and Hadramaut took over
dominance from the Mineans and promoted advanced engineering projects,
including a large dam near Marib. Still later the Himyarites became
paramount in the area. Northern Arabia was conquered by Darius, the
Persian, at the close of the century. Additional Notes

MEDITERRANEAN COASTAL AREAS

ISREAL (JUDEA: PALESTINE)

As the century began, internal strife and decay seemed imminent in
Palestine. The prophet Jeremiah, writing at about 600 B.C., deplored the
status and wrote like an undercover agent of Babylonia, seeming to hope
that the Babylonians would conquer the Jews. If so, his hopes were soon
fulfilled and Nebuchadrezzar took thousands of Jews as captives, to
Babylon. While there, the prophet Ezekial, like Isaiah and Jeremiah before
him, made fierce denunciations of idolatry and corruption of Jerusalem, but
at the same time tried to keep the Jews from being absorbed by their
captors. Even in bondage they stayed more or less intact, and they

prospered and multiplied. But they did take over many Babylonian legends,
which appeared later in the Old Testament, intermingled and fused with the
true Hebrew stories. (See also Syria).

The Jews were finally liberated from Babylon by Cyrus, the Persian, in
540-538 B.C. and they migrated back to their homeland. The prophet, the
"2nd Isaiah" (actual author unknown), whose writings may actually be a
mixture from several men, began to lift the Judaic religion to a lofty state,
re-emphasizing the coming of God and the Messiah. The Jewish Temple
was rebuilt in Jerusalem. (Ref. 45)

LEBANON: PHOENICIA

Phoenicia was ruled from 586 to 538 B.C. by the Chaldean Nebuchadrezzar
although the city of Tyre did not fall until 573 B.C. after a thirteen year
siege. Later the country was divided into four vassal kindgoms, under the
Persians. Extensive sea activity continued, however, and it is possible that a
Phoenician ship circumnavigated Africa about this time. (See Israel). (Ref.
J22)

IRAQ AND SYRIA

Seeming to foretell the future importance of Iraq as a source of petroleum,
even in this 6th century B.C. oil was found on the surface in various parts of
the country and was called naphtha. Bitumen was used to calk ships. (Ref.
213) An independent Babylonia prospered under the reign of
Nebuchadrezzar II, the Chaldean, and Babylon became a famed metropolis,
known particularly because of its famed hanging gardens. Ass-drawn
wheeled carts, oar driven river boats and camel caravans all brought a
mixture of food, precious metals, dyes, glassware and textiles to the city.
The traffic also brought an occasional plague. (Ref. 222) This second
Babylonian Empire was essentially a Semitic civilization. After an initial
attack on Judea, Nebuchadrezzar carried about 10,000 Jews back to the
capital, but later almost all the population of Jerusalem was brought in
bondage to Babylon, with the captivity period running from 586 to 538 B.C.

Nebuchadrezzar supposedly built the ziggurat of Etemananki, thought to be
the infamous Tower of Babel, which has since been destroyed. The base of
this tower measured 300 feet on a side. Near the end of his life he also tried
to reconstruct the entire city of Ur, making the reconstructed ziggurat a
seven-stage one. Even these ancients did not escape periods of severe
inflation, and the wars and building activities of Nebuchadrezzar resulted in
a 50% rise in prices between about 560 and 550 B.C. (Ref. 213) After the
famous king's death, the empire crumbled rapidly, hastened by the
aberration of the priests of Marduk, and subsequently the Achaemenid
Persians had no trouble taking control of the area. The contributions of
Babylonia to posterity include the legends, carried through the captive
Jews, that became a part of Europe's religious lore, foundations of
mathematics, astronomy, medicine, grammar, lexicography archeology,
history and philosophy, as well as the design for the ziggurats, leading later
to the Moslem towers. The Persian Cyrus became king of Babylon in 539
B.C. and the city lost its importance for evermore, as the ruler lived in
Persia. Cyrus did complete some reconstruction work in Ur, however,
restoring a gate in the great wall and probably working on one of the
temples. This was done in spite of the fact that there was then little trade to
this city. (Ref. 238, 28, 46)

IRAN: PERSIA

As Assyria fell, Cyaxares, king of the Medes, extended his rule on west
across Iran, but in 550 B.C., Cyrus, prince of Persia, rebelled against the
Medes and defeated their then king, Astyages, joining the two peoples
together to make Iran a dominant south- west Asian power. They had iron
technology and were able to exploit the horse for communication and
warfare. The word "Iran" in Persian is the same as the word "Aryan" in
English. Cyrus proceeded to capture Babylonia and almost all of Syria and
Sardis, in Asia Minor. This Persian Empire became one of the best
governed in history. It soon reached the natural limits in size and extent
which were set by the condition of the soil and climate restricting peasant
agriculture, abutting on the steppe in the north, the desert in the south and
limited on the Aegean only by their long supply line as they came up
against the Greeks. (Ref. 140) Cyrus' son, Cambyses, extended the empire

into Egypt and then went mad and committed suicide. Darius 1, of the
junior Achaemenid line, became king in 521, then conquered the sick
Scythians in Russia and carried the Persian Empire to the Indus River in
Pakistan. The official religion of the Achaemenid Dynasty was
Zorastrianism but in the western areas Judaism co-existed as a competing
faith, and in some areas this resulted in a complex fusion of both religious
themes. Toynbee (Ref. 220) considers this empire the beginning of the
"Universal State" of the old Syriac Society, but one must realize that the
Syriac state was Semitic and the Persian conquest ended the Semitic rule in
western Asia for a thousand years. (Ref. 140, 220)

We should mention that still another Iranian tribe, the Parthians, existed at
this time around the southern shore of the Caspian Sea. In this century they
fell under the control of the Medes and then the Persians, but as we shall
see they will be heard from again in the future.

ASIA MINOR

TURKEY

Although Greek lonian cities continued to prosper along the coast, the
country of Lydia expanded to occupy almost all the remainder of the
peninsula. The fabulous wealth of these people and their famous King
Croesus (570-546 B.C.) was based on a natural alloy of gold and silver
called "electum", and coins were invented to act as a standard measure of
this substance. Between these Lydians and the Medes, the Phrygian and
Cimmerian peoples of Asia Minor were absorbed, although a fragment of
the latter people survived in the Crimea as the "Tauri". By mid-century, just
after Croesus had subdued lonia, on the coast, even Lydia was engulfed by
Persia and disappeared as a nation. (Ref. 28, 136)

Additional Notes

ARMENIA

The Medes drove the Scythians out of Armenia by 590 B.C. and the newly
arrived Armenians of probably Phrygian origin continued to live there as a
vigorous race. Although technically under the dominion of the Persian
Empire in the last half of the century, they remained essentially independent
in action because of their remoteness from the Persian center of
government. The Armenians retained the Anatolic or Hittite nose.

Forward to The Near East: 500 to 401 B.C.
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CON DMDUBRWN FE

Note:In the northwest part of the peninsula, nearest the cities of Phoenicia,
was the Kingdom of Dedan, where Lihyanites carved lion reliefs above
sandstone tombs, in 600 B.C. This was the alleged retreat of Moses, where
he met the Biblical Reuel at the well. (Ref. 315)

Note:Until 600 B.C. Ephesus, on the coast of Turkey, was a world-class
lonian city, but thereafter silt began to fill up the harbor and it deteriorated.
Now the Aegean is 11 kilometers away. A similar fate overtook Troy. (Ref.
281)

The Near East: 500 to 401 B.C.

THE NEAR EAST (THE 1ST GREAT CENTER OF
CIVILIZATION)

Back to The Near East: 600 to 501 B.C.

ARABIA AND JORDAN

Between the Gulf of Aqaba and the Dead Sea on the trade route between
south Arabia and Syria the Nabataean Kingdom developed with a capital at
Petra. Because of its location it was influenced by the Aramaic (Syrian)
civilization and still later by the Greeks. The Nabataeans migrated up from
the south to settle in this cliff area, levying tolls on all caravan goods
passing through. Petra had a theatre, thermal baths, palaces and a system of
canals for water. This once thriving city, about ninety miles southwest of
present day Amman, Jordan, was buried for centuries and only recently
excavated by the Swiss Burckhardt. Qataban and Hadramaut were two new
kingdoms which appeared on the south coast of Arabia. (Ref. 136, 176)

MEDITERRANEAN COASTAL AREAS OF ISRAEL AND
LEBANON

Many Phoenician ports which were constructed at this period of low sea
levels are today below the water line. Both Phoenicia and Judea remained
under Persian rule, but their separate reactions differed. While Phoenicia
faded away as a country, living in the future only in its colony of Carthage,
the Jews strove to keep their national identity.

The priest, Ezra, called the Jews together and they read and adopted the
Book of the Law of Moses, which was probably the first five books of the
Bible, the 'Torah' or the "Pentateuch". Those stories were drawn from a
storehouse of Mesopotamian legend as old as 3,000 including the legends

of Paradise, the Flood, etc. Nehemiah rebuilt the walls of Jerusalem (445 -
433 B.C.) and enforced the observance of the law. (Ref. 224, 46)

IRAQ AND SYRIA

This entire area was a part of the Persian Empire, but there was a revival of
Damascus as a cultural center. At the end of the century Darius II died (405
B.C.) and his son Artaxerxes II became emperor while a brother, Cyrus the
younger, became Iranian viceroy in the west. The latter recruited a force of
ten thousand Greek mercenaries and marched them across Asia Minor into
Syria and Mesopotamia to revolt against his brother. in a great battle at
Cunaxa in 401 the Greek troops defeated the Persians, but Cyrus was killed
and the mercenaries retreated with some difficulties back to the shore of the
Black Sea and then home. The Greek's victory, however, gave them
renewed confidence and helped set the stage for Alexander 's later Asiatic
invasions. At that time many Jews still lived in Babylonia and some in the
Persian controlled city of Ur.

NOTE: Insert Map from Reference 97. 24. THE RETREAT OF THE TEN
THOUSAND

401-399 B.C.

IRAN: PERSIA

As the century opened Darius I was continuing his conquests into-a part of
northern Greece, being finally stopped at the famous battle of Marathon.
The Persian Empire now included thirty satrapies (provinces) each ruled by
a satrap appointed by the king. In each, also, was a general and a financial
officer responsible only to the king. These territories included Egypt,
Palestine, Syria, Phoenicia, Lydia, Phrygia, Ionia, Cappadocia, Cilicia,
Armenia, Assyria, the Caucasus, Babylonia, Media, Persia proper,
Afghanistan, Baluchistan, India west of the Indus, Bactria and other regions
of several central Asiatic tribes. The official language was Old Persian,

closely related to Sanscrit, and written in cuneiform. The more generally
used lingua franca of the empire, however, was Aramaic, written in
alphabetic form. The Persian conquests were made possible by mounted
bowmen and Bactrian camels. The latter made the long lances of the
Scythians and other enemy tribes ineffective. (Ref. 28, 213)

That Darius was a true "Grand Monarch" is evident from the story that a
thousand animals were slaughtered each day for the royal table in
Persopolis[footnote]. Upon the death of Darius in 485 B.C. his son, Xerxes
I, inherited the great empire. He was a sensual man and with him the "mob
of nations", contaminated with drunkenness and immorality, began to fall
apart. Xerxes dispersed the Babylonian priesthood and destroyed their
temple of Marduk, but when he made another attempt to take the remainder
of Greece his troops were turned back at Thermophylae and his fleet was
defeated at the naval battle of Salamis[footnote]. Still lesser kings followed
- Artaxerxes I and Darius II, etc. The later Achaemenid kings demonstrated
great brutality, in spite of their Zorastrian religion.

Trager so quotes the historian Xenophon. (Ref. 222, page 15)

Xerxes' army crossed the Hellespont by joining about 700 ships, anchoring
them and tying the end ships to land, laying planks, brushwood and earth
across them. (Ref. 213, page 193)

The metal workers of the Achaemenid dynasty period have left numerous
small objects of art made of gold and silver. The use of animal shapes was
common and the lion, symbolizing royalty and power, and the bull,
symbolizing strength, vitality and loyalty being two of the more popular.
Later Christian iconography used the same symbols for two of the
evangelists - Mark being represented by the lion and the physician, Luke,
by the bull. The Iranian artists had the ability to develop light reflection
which is said to be a characteristic of the light on the landscape of the
Iranian plateau itself. (Ref. 197) Additional Notes

ASIA MINOR

In the early century this entire area also was merely a part of the Persian
Empire, but in the far eastern portion the Armenians retained some measure

of autonomy. In 499 B.C. Ionian cities along the coast, led by Aristogoras,
revolted against Persia. This so-called "Ionian Revolt" was helped by ships
from Athens and Eretria and they succeeded in burning the old Lydian
capital of Sardis. Within five years, however, the revolt was crushed, and it
was mid-century before the Greeks could again control the coastal cities.
(Ref. 28, 88)

Note: Xerxes did not devastate the land as his armies traveled, but he had
agents gather food supplies from his own territories and deliver them to
stations along the intended route. Once in Greece, however, he eventually
had to withdraw because there was no way he could feed his entire army
over the winter. He had exceeded the practical limit of imperial expansion.
In this and the next few centuries Iranian warriors bred a large, powerful
horse capable of carrying a fully armored man and the horses, too, were
protected by metal. Although this heavy cavalry was slower than that of
the steppe, it was more or less arrow proof and capable of use with either
bow or lance. To feed these great horses alfalfa was supplied by the local
peasants as pay for the protection given by those "cataphracts". (Ref. 279)

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ARABIA AND JORDAN AND MEDITERRANEAN COASTAL
AREAS

Nomadic tribes roamed the deserts of Arabia and in the south there was the
Himyarite civilization, as previously described. Otherwise this entire area
shared a common fate under first the Persians and then Alexander.

IRAQ AND SYRIA

In this century Xenophon remarked on the size and succulence of the dates
from the date trees of Mesopotamia. Palms had flourished there since
50,000 B.C. and the net- work of canals that were built were ideal for the
palms which lined them, and they did not impinge on the grain growing
land. An average date palm produces one hundred pounds of rich, sugary
fruit each year for sixty years or more, and a very good tree may produce
one-half as much again. Figs were also grown and eaten in these ancient
days. (Ref. 211)

Iraq and Syria were completely dominated by the Persians until the
excursions of Alexander late in the century. He destroyed the Persian army
at Gaugamele on the upper Tigris in 331 B.C. and brought an end to the
Persian Achaemenid rule. It is said that in the same year Alexander tried to
rebuild the Tower of Babel, but the initial clearing of the land alone took
10,000 men some two months to complete, and he had to give up the task.

As others, the ancient city of Ur was dying and the final blow came at the
end of the century as the Euphrates changed its course to run some ten
miles to the east of this city and there was no more river traffic. (Ref. 8,

176, 238) More detail conceming Alexander's conquests will be given
under the section on the UPPER BALKANS later in this chapter.

IRAN: PERSIA

As noted in the last chapter the state religion of Persia was Zorastrian
monotheism and the ancient gods were out of favor. As the century opened
the Persian Empire was deteriorating under a series of weak rulers. Finally
Darius III, the last of the Achaemenids (338 - 330 B.C.) lost the empire to
Alexander of Macedonia. We shall give more details a little later in this
chapter, but a point not often emphasized is that every Persian grandee had
bodyguards and troops of Greeks as mercenaries, and this meant that
Alexander's chief opponents were of ten Greeks, and they may not have
resisted too well ' After Alexander's death Persia was administered from
Syria by General Seleucus, who soon became orientalized and founded the
Seleucid Dynasty. (Ref. 8)

ASIA MINOR

As the Persian influence waned, Greek domination increased and the bulk
of Asia Minor easily became part of Alexander's empire. In the east, but
still west of Armenia, in the regions known as Pontus and Cappadocia, a
Persian noble, Mithridates, independent of his cousins in Iran, carved out
his own empire. The same occurred in Armenia at the end of the century
when a Persian satrap made the country independent of the Seleucids (317
B.C.) and founded a dynasty that ruled for a century. In both of these
satrapies, as well as in Bithynia, farther west, the basic population was still
Phrygian. (Ref. 28)

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ARABIA AND JORDAN

In Yemen, Sheba absorbed Maan about 250 B.C. but otherwise there was no
significant change from the previous century. (Ref. 136)

MEDITERRANEAN COASTAL AREAS OF ISRAEL AND
LEBANON

This was a part of the Egyptian Ptolemaic Empire until the very end of the
century, when it was taken by Antiochus III the Great, of Syria, for the
Seleucid domains.

IRAQ AND SYRIA

As the center of the Seleucid Dynasty, this area maintained a Greek culture
with an oriental twist. Through the use of records of the movements of the
heavenly bodies kept from the 8th century B.C. the Babylonians discovered
the periodicity of the eclipses and the mathematical coordinates defining the
exact paths of the moon and the sun. The power of the Seleucids began to
wane in this century and much of their empire fell away, although at the
very end of the period King Antiochus III, called the Great, restored the
Syrian fortunes by reconquering their far eastern realms and adding to the
domain along the Mediterranean coast from Asia Minor down to the
borders of Egypt. He established a library at Antioch and promoted
literature. (Ref. 47)

IRAN: PERSIA

After Alexander's death the Parthians in the north had revolted against the
Greek domination and had formed a separate kingdom under Arsaces1.
These people and the

Persian tribes farther south, gradually eroded a good deal of the Seleucid
power. The Parthian King Tiridates (247 - 212 B.C.) transferred his capital
to Hecatompylos on the southeast corner of the Caspian Sea, to be on the
caravan route from Seleucia to Bactria and at the same time he evacuated
Seleucus IT. At the end of the century, however, Antiochus III reconquered
most of this territory temporarily for the Syrian Dynasty, reducing the
Parthian Arsaces III Priapatius to vassalship. (Ref. 8, 28)

ASIA MINOR

Although most of Asia Minor was nominally under Greek control, divided
between the Ptolemies and the Seleucids, several states maintained more or
less independent kingdoms. In the south the small but fine and powerful
kingdom of Pergamum had developed as a Grecian city under Seleucus but
it broke free under Eumenes I as he allied with the Ptolemies in 262 B.C.
Other non-Greek but Hellenized kingdoms were Bithynia, Cappadocia
(Pontus), Armenia and Media Atropatine. Pontus and Bithynia invited some
wild Celts, who had just devastated the Grecian peninsula, to come to Asia
Minor and settle, hoping that they would act as a buffer between the
northern states and the Seleucids. But these Celtic Galatians, once
established in central Anatolia, terrorized the cities along the coast. The
kings of Pergamum, however, with Ptolemaic help, stood off both the
Galatians and the Selucids.

Pergamum had been founded by the eunuch, Philetairos, former treasurer of
the Diadoch Lysimachos who had absconded with the treasury, gone over to
the rival Seleucus and used this fortune to finagle a new state of his own.
His army was madeup of hired mercenaries. Upon his death his nephew,
Eumenes, defeated Antiochus and became the most powerful man in
Anatolia. Using his inherited money he further built up his army, founded

cities, pushed out his borders and paid high tribute to the wild Galatians to
keep them at a distance. (Ref. 91) Eumenes' nephew and successor,
Attalos1, actually defeated the Celtic Galatians and then set about
establishing libraries, arts, museums, etc. with some of the great artistic
treasures of mankind, and the capital city rivaled Alexandria as a center of
learning. An example of the architecture is shown in the picture on the next
page - a temple altar of Pergamum, now reassembled in an East Berlin
Museum. The pharaoh of Egypt jealously forbade the export of the papyrus
plant or its products, so Pergamum had to develop a writing material of its
own from animal skin, subsequently called "pergamentum" or "parchment".
With this they accumulated some 200,000 books[footnote]. Unfortunately
this fabulous little nation lasted little more than a century. (Ref. 28, 125, 15)
Between 10 and 30 "books" of antiquity would comprise 1 book today,
because either papyrus or parchment made a very thick roll. (Ref. 15)

In the far eastern part of the peninsula Armenia remained under its own
dynasty until 211 B.C. when Antiochus III of Syria took control and divided
the country into two satrapies.

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ARABIA AND JORDAN

Arabian dromedary caravan traffic was now the monopoly of the Nabataean
Arabs who maintained a series of caravan stations. Upon the collapse of the
Seleucids late in the century these Arabs then acquired Damascus itself.
(Ref. 136)

MEDITERRANEAN COASTAL AREAS OF ISRAEL AND
LEBANON

The Book of Daniel was written about 165 B.C. and the Book of Enoch
perhaps slightly later. In the former year Judah Maccabee and his brothers,
after taking Jerusalem back from the Syrians, restored the monotheistic
religion. It was later said that they found only enough oil left in the temple
to keep a light burning for one day, but somehow it lasted eight days and
this is the event celebrated annually as the Hanukkah. By 143 B.C. Simon
Maccabee had freed Judea entirely, beginning the Hasmonean Dynasty of
priest kings which ruled Judea and some lands east of the Jordan until 104
B.C., after which Aristobulus I and his brother, Alexander Jannaeus, ruled
savagely until well into the next century. (Ref. 222)

IRAQ AND SYRIA

Near the Mediterranean coast there was a thriving Hellenic culture centered
on the large city of Antioch and the supporting cities of Laodicea and
Apamia. The great Seleucid King Antiochus III invaded Greece in 192 B.C.

but was soon pushed back by Roman armies and the Roman fleet. In 190
two of the Scipio brothers crossed the Hellespont and defeated Antiochus in
the great battle of Magnesia, near Smyrna in Asia Minor. The result was
that the Seleucids lost all European and Asiatic possessions as far as the
Taurus Mountains and from then on the old Syrian Dynasty continued to
decline. By the end of the century almost this entire area was taken over by
the Parthians.

IRAN: PERSIA

Eastern Persia was ruled by the Parthian Arsacid Dynasty and they
continued to develop a powerful empire, keeping the administrative
structure of the preceding Seleucid government. In 141 B.C. Mithridates I
of Parthia entered Seleucia, itself, on the Tigris River and for the next 775
years, with only a few minor set backs, Persia remained one of the richest
and most powerful regions of the ancient world. (Ref. 8) Their military
system was based on an Iranian nobility but they accorded the Hellenic
cities full autonomy and did nothing to weaken the Hellenic stamp.

The western spread of the Parthians was the result, in part at least, of
pressure on their northeastern frontier by migrating peoples from the Asian
steppes. Some of these may have been a Mongolian people called "Hsiung-
nu" by the Chinese, but probably the chief offenders were the Yue-chi,
another Iranian tribe returning from a previous expansion into Asia proper.
Their immediate descendants were called "Kushans" and they pushed their
cousins the Shakas and Samartians ahead of them toward southern Russia
and the Parthians down into Persia. (Ref. 136)

ASIA MINOR

TURKEY

Early in the century the Roman armies began to be active in Asia Minor,
driving the invading Celts from the north back out of the peninsula, and
defeating the Seleucid Antiochus, in the battle of Magnesia, thus
inaugurating the Roman conquest of the Hellenic East.

Meanwhile in northeastern Asia Minor activity was rampant in the regions
of Bithynia and Pontus. The people of both were mixtures of Thracians,
Greeks and Iranians, overlying an antique Hittite stock. Mithridates VI, who
now inherited the throne of Pontus, was a strong, educated man, speaking
twenty-two languages and with the help of Greek officers and mercenaries
he conquered Armenia and the Caucasus and entered the Crimea of
southern Russia, controlling the Black Sea on all sides except the
southwest. He then invaded Bithynia, arousing fears for the Bosporus
Straits in the minds of the Roman military. So the latter ordered Mithridates
out of Bithynia, setting the stage for actual war in the next century. The
Galatians continued to oppose Pergamum, sometimes allying themselves
with Bithynia, but they received a crushing defeat by Eumenes II in 166
B.C., and had great difficulty holding Pontus off their territory. When the
Pergamum King Attalus died in 133 B.C. he left his kingdom to Rome. It
was at this period that Hipparchus of Nicaea elaborated the scheme of
spheres and epicycles that became the classical construction of the universe.
(Ref. 48, 91)

NOTE: Insert Map: 26: ASIA MINOR IN 189 B.C

ARMENIA

We noted at the close of the last century that Armenia was conquered by
Antiochus III and divided into two satrapies. The western one, Armenia
Minor, was given to Zadriades and the eastern one, Armenia Major, to
Artaxis. After Antiochus’ defeat at Magnesia in 190 B.C. the two governors
made themselves independent rulers, founding two separate dynasties. At
the end of the century the area was temporarily overrun by Mithridates VI,
the ambitious king of Pontus. (Ref. 119)

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ARABIA AND JORDAN

During the Hellenistic era the Himyarites of southern Arabia had lost their
chief source of prosperity when part of the Indian trade was diverted
through Egypt, but in 24 B.C., they were still strong enough to defeat the
Roman General Gallus, who had been sent to conquer them and the
invaders were driven into the desert where many died from heat and thirst.
The Nabataean kingdom, in present day southern Jordan, became powerful
at this time, with a capital at Petra. Amman, in northern Jordan, was first
destroyed and conquered and then rebuilt by the Romans. (Ref. 176)

MEDITERRANEAN COASTAL AREAS OF ISRAEL AND
LEBANON

By 78 B.C. in Judea the Hasmoneans had enlarged their realm so that their
territory was as extensive as it had been under Solomon, but the rulers
began to lose their religiosity and yielded to Hellenizing elements. Toynbee
(Ref. 221) says that the Jews' Canaanite culture was not a backward one and
was probably equal to the Hellenic in achievement, but it was different in
ethos and the Hellenic was the more potent and soon dominated.

In 63 B.C., however, Judea was conquered by Pompey for Rome. As he laid
siege to Jerusalem, the Jewish King Aristobulus took refuge in the walled
precincts of the Temple and held out for three months. When the ramparts
finally fell 12,000 Jews were slaughtered, with some leaping to death from
the walls. None surrendered. Pompey left the Temple untouched but exacted
10,000 talents ($3,600,000) from the nation and transferred all Hasmonean
cities to the Roman power. Hyrcanus II was made high priest and nominal

ruler of Judea, but as the ward of Anatipater the Idumean, who had helped
Rome. The independent monarchy was ended and Judea became part of the
Roman province of Syria. Herod the Great became subject king in 37 B.C.
and using Roman funds, financed a local army to drive the invading
Parthians back out of this territory. Herod was also an Idumean and not a
Jew either by origin or conviction[footnote]. (Ref. 48) He, like other rulers
of his time, had loose morals, ten wives, nine at one time, meted out cruel
punishments and had an Hellenic leaning. The Pharisees[footnote] were
against Herod and by the time he died in 4 B.C. he was hated by all the
people. His realm was divided among his three sons. On our present
calendar Jesus appears to have been born between 7 and 4 B.C. (Ref. 222)
Trager (Ref. 222) claims that on the contrary Herod converted to Judaism in
his youth and at the time of his death was rebuilding the great Temple at
Jerusalem. He does not give the source of this information

The Pharisees were a group of Jewish Elders

There were about 2,500,000 people in Palestine in this era and most of them
spoke Aramic, although the priests and scholars knew Hebrew and the
officials and foreigners used Greek. There was constant strife between the
Jews in the interior of Palestine and Gentiles on the coast, and there was
strife within the Great Council of the Elders of Israel who ruled over the
people for religious offenses. The higher priests and Sadducees were a
conservative element holding for the written law of the Hebrews (Torah)
and the Pharisees and Scribes[footnote] were a liberal element voting to
accept oral traditions as well as the Torah. The Psalms of Solomon and the
Book of Joshua (Ecclesiasticus) were written in this century, although the
latter is not accepted by the Jews. (Ref. 48)

The Scribes were scholars of the Law

IRAQ AND SYRIA

During this century Syria and Iraq became primarily a battle ground
between the two formidable forces of the Romans in the west and the
Parthians in the east. Although Antiochus VIII and IX and Seleucus VI each
reigned briefly, in 83 B.C. the shrunken Seleucid Kingdom was taken over
by Armenia and twenty years later it became a Roman province. (Ref. 222)

(Please see map in the ITALY section, this chapter). At the ancient
Mesopotamian city of Carrhae, just north of the upper Euphrates, the
Roman General Crassus met the Parthians and was defeated and killed by
the Shaka bowmen of the Parthians' Suren ally. (Ref. 28, 8)

IRAN (PERSIA)

The Parthians were in control of Iran and were pretty well able to contain
the Romans in Syria on their western flank, but they were now having
additional troubles on their northern and eastern borders. In 88 B.C.
Tigranes II of Armenia invaded Parthia, overrunning four vassal states,
reducing the size of Parthian controlled territory. (Ref. 222) In addition the
Yue-chi and the neighboring Iranian Shaka had already taken Bactria and
were starting to move into the Middle East, attacking eastern Iran. To hold
off these attacks the Parthians used very large, heavily armored horses and
men in cavalry units called "cataphracts", against the invaders' light, nomad,
bow cavalry.

ASIA MINOR: ANATOLIA

TURKEY

We noted in the last chapter that King Mithridates IV of Pontus had
launched an imperialistic campaign which had brought him into contact
with the displeased Romans.

The First Mithridatic War broke out in 88 B.C. and Mithridates surged out
of Asia Minor to take the Cyclades, Thessaly, Macedonia and Thrace before
he was stopped down in Greece, proper, by the Roman Sulla. The king was
given a lenient peace and returned to Pontus to raise another army and fleet.
The Roman legate in Asia, Murena, realizing that the king was rearming,
attacked Pontus in the Second Mithridatic War between 83 and 81 B.C., but
was defeated. The Romans returned to the attack in the Third Mithridatic

War of 75 to 63 B.C. and this time all Asia Minor became Roman. Wells
(Ref. 229) states that

100,000 Roman Italians were massacred during this war. The Roman
conquest was complete when King Nicomedes III gave his country of
Bithynia to Rome in 75 B.C. About 350 miles south of present day Ankara
was the small country of Commagene, ruled by Ceniochus I, who claimed
descent from both Greek and Persian kings. He had colossal statues made,
including one of himself, and some of these thirty foot high constructions
have survived earthquakes, storms and wars, remaining erect at the present
time. (Ref. 229, 176)

ARMENIA

Tigranes the Great, actually a son-in-law of Mithridates, united Armenia
once again in 95 B.C. and added territory from Syria and Cappadocia,
making Armenia the most powerful nation in western Asia. By 70 B.C. his
empire extended from the Ararat Valley to the Phoenician city of Tyre on
the Mediterranean coast, much of this territory having been taken from the
Parthians. By 66 B.C., however, Tigranes had fallen into the hands of
Pompey as the latter was driving Mithridates of Pontus to the eastern edge
of the Black Sea. Thereafter the Armenian king ruled merely as a vassal of
Rome. (Ref. 222) By the end of the century when emissaries of the Han
Dynasty of China reached the eastern shores of the Caspian Sea, they found
only stories of a civilization that had receded. The memory of Alexander
remained, but of Rome men knew only that Pompey had come to the
western shore of the Caspian and then gone away and that Crassus had been
destroyed.

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ARABIA AND JORDAN

As direct voyages across the full width of the Arabian Sea had become
routine, trade across the peninsula increased, linking Alexandria with India.
The Himyarite Arabs absorbed Oataban about A.D. 50 and the Hadramaut
about A.D. 100, while farther north the Nabatean Empire was conquered by
Rome. Across the gulf from Ethiopia the Kingdom of Axum developed as a
part of its Ethiopian counterpart, but on Arabic soil. At the end of the
century Christianity gradually filtered into the peninsula. (Ref. 136)

MEDITERRANEAN COASTAL AREAS OF ISRAEL AND
LEBANON

Rome formally annexed Palestine in A.D. 6 and in A.D. 44 Judea was
finally placed under direct rule of Roman procurators. The early century is
the period of Jesus' teaching of universal love and forgiveness, but in
general the Jews were not won over. The first of the Romano-Jewish Wars
occurred in the last third of the century (A.D. 66) when the Jews, under
John of Giscala, revolted against Roman misrule. It ended in a great battle
(A.D. 70) with 600,000 to 1,000,000 Jews killed, their temple destroyed and
the survivors forced to undergo another "dispersion". When the new
Christians had failed to support this Jewish uprising, anti-Christian riots
also broke out. After the Roman victory, the Sadducees disappeared entirely
and the Pharisees, previously a sort of priest-elder group, now became the
Rabbis, or teachers of the people. Overall at that time there were in the
Roman population Jews in the ratio of 7%, a number twice that of the Jews
in the United States in the Mid-twentieth century. (Ref. 8, 222)

TRAQ AND SYRIA

This century was one of relative stability along the frontier dividing the
Parthian and Roman Empires. Syria (although perhaps it was Egypt) was
probably the site of the invention of a technique of glass blowing so that
soon glass utensils were in general use all over the Mediterranean.
Christianity came to Malula in the mountains just north of Damascus and
still today some 1,500 Christians live there, speaking Western Aramic, the
language of Jesus. Adjacent caves may have been used in this first century
as places of refuge. (Ref. 136, 118)

IRAN: PERSIA

Persia was the hub of the Parthian Empire. The people spoke Pahlavi and
wrote in Aramic on parchment, but unfortunately not a line of the Parthian
literature has been preserved. They were either too rich or too poor to
indulge in literature, but they did excel in self-adornment, with both sexes
curling their hair and enjoying elaborate clothing. They hunted, ate and
drank abundantly, were brave warriors and usually honorable foes.
Polygamy was practiced and women were veiled and secluded, with divorce
easy for either sex. They were perhaps less civilized than the Achaemenid
Persians but more honorable gentlemen than the Romans. They were
tolerant of religions while they worshipped the sun and the moon and
preferred the God Mithras to Ahura Mazda, much as later Christians
preferred Christ to Yahveh. The Arsacid Dynasty ruled from just before the
beginning of this century for two hundred years. (Ref. 48)

ASIA MINOR

Most of Asia Minor was firmly under Roman rule with Commagene falling
to them by A.D. 17. Armenia was divided and actually was another frontier
between the Romans and the Parthians while the cultural orientation of that
country was definitely toward Persia and Parthia. In the middle of the
century, in Nero's reign in Rome, his legions had a ten year war with Parthia

over Armenia. This ended in A.D. 63 with a scion of the Parthian royal
house recognized as king of Armenia, although under Roman suzerainty.
Seven years later Vespasian moved some eastern troops from Syria to forts
on the upper Euphrates to consolidate the eastern frontier against Armenia
and Parthia, thus paving the way for later expansion by Trajan. (Ref. 176,
136)

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The increasing land and sea trade between the Mediterranean, India and
China increased chances of unfamiliar infections spreading to susceptible
populations and severe epidemics are known to have hit the Mediterranean
populations and probably China too in this century. (Ref. 140)

ARABIA AND JORDAN

The trade routes across the Arabian peninsula were very active at this time.
The citizens of Palmyra owned and escorted caravans between the Roman
Empire (controlling Jordan and some of northern Arabia) and the Persian
Gulf ports of Charax and Apologos, thus accumulating great wealth which
permitted the financing of spectacular public buildings. Petra performed the
same functions farther south between the Persian Gulf and the Red Sea
ports. (Ref. 8)

MEDITERRANEAN COASTAL AREAS OF ISRAEL AND
LEBANON

The industry and trade of Judea and the area of Lebanon were intimately
connected with the whole of Syria and Iraq. Although the entire region
remained under Roman control, the basic people of these lands remained
Jewish and Phoenician in derivation, as always. The dye industry, inherited
from old Phoenicia continued to function along with schools of medicine
and law at Beirut. The upper classes were of Hellenic culture and the Greek
language was used in literature and government, while the lower classes
remained oriental and spoke Aramaic.

In A.D. 132 under the leadership of Simeon Bar Cocheba, who claimed to
be the Messiah, the Jews made their last effort in antiguity to recover their
freedom and their homeland. In the last of the Romano-Jewish Wars they
fought desperately for three years against the Roman legions. One-half
million men were killed and more starved. After the Jewish defeat, Hadrian
forbade any Jewish ritual and the vanquished were shut out of their Holy
City and scattered again.

In the next four centuries there were written two Talmuds, one from
Jerusalem and a much longer Babylonian version containing a rich
collection of medical lore among the other authoritative Jewish traditions.
Some of the medical material came from Alexandria where Jews had
flocked in the 4th century B.C. Although dead bodies were avoided as
unclean, Rabbi Ishmael is said to have boiled and then studied the body of a
prostitute. In surgery the Talmud discusses means of reducing dislocations
and performing certain other operations. (Ref. 48, 125)

IRAQ AND SYRIA

At the beginning of this century there were ten million people living in
Greater Syria, which probably encompassed modern Lebanon and Iraq, and
there was great prosperity due to the dye and glass industries. Today there
are only three million people living in the same area, most finding only a
precarious existence. In A.D. 114 the Emperor Trajan exploited a moment
of Parthian weakness and advanced down the Tigres and Euphrates rivers to
the Persian Gulf, thus putting the rule of Rome over this entire ancient land.
In the Hadrian Principate to follow, however, (A.D. 117 - 138), the Roman
troops were withdrawn to the Euphrates which then became the eastern
boundary of the empire. In the area between the Red and the Black Seas, a
hundred cities flourished in this era of relative Roman peace. The political
and military reverses of the Jews in Judea in no way affected the large
number of them living in Babylonia and elsewhere in the empire. (Ref. 8)

IRAN

Emperor Trajan also invaded part of Iran and between A.D. 115 and 117 all
of Media and part of Parthia, itself, belonged to Rome, but as noted in the
paragraph above, Hadrian withdrew all troops to the Euphrates, freeing the
main areas of Persia and the Parthian Empire remained pretty well intact.
Late in the century Roman generals again attempted to invade this region
(165 and 198) but with no lasting effect. (Ref. 8)

ASIA MINOR: ANATOLIA

TURKEY

Even under the years of Roman rule, the Ionian Greek culture still
flourished along the coast of Asia Minor. Soranus of Ephesus wrote a
treatise on diseases of women, birth and care of children (A.D. 116), a work
which marks him as a great gynecologist. Only Hippocrates and Galen rank
above him in the medicine of ancient times.

ARMENIA

Armenia was a site of almost constant warfare. Just before the beginning of
this century that country and Parthia were allied, but when the Parthian
King Chosroes set up a puppet governor in Armenia, Trajan declared war,
claiming a treaty violation. In 114, on the death of the Parthian puppet,
Trajan annexed the country. After his death, however, Hadrian withdrew the
troops to a less advanced position and Armenia was again left alone until
Marcus sent General Verus back to the area in 162. Verus cruised through
Syria and up to Armenia, where he put a Roman puppet on the throne. The
Armenians may gave gotten their revenge, however, because upon Verus'
return to the West, his troops brought with them a terrible plague which
seriously depopulated the empire in A.D. 166 and 167. (Ref. 119)

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ARABIA AND JORDAN

Jordan belonged to the Romans, but most of Arabia was untouched by the
Roman armies. In the south of the peninsula the cities began to decline and
the nomads again assumed rule. By the end of the century the Aksumite
kings of Ethiopia were in control of Yemen and the Sassanian King Shapur
annexed Oman on the Arabian Gulf shore about A.D. 260. (Ref. 8

MEDITERRANEAN COASTAL AREAS OF ISRAEL AND
LEBANON

Lebanon was a part of Roman controlled Syria and even Judea was non-
existent as a Separate Jewish state. The common people of most of these
areas tended to remain unchanged, century after century, however, and
basically only the governments shifted.

At the beginning of the century the Rabbi Judah codified Jewish law, both
civil and religious, in a work called the "Mishnah" which became the basis
of continuous study in the Middle East and was later preserved in the
Talmud. (Ref. 8)

IRAQ AND SYRIA

As the century opened this entire area was dominated by Rome but in the
old area of Mesopotamia in western Iraq the Persian King Ardashir invaded
about A.D. 230, but shortly withdrew again. This was followed in A.D. 260

by Shapur I with clouds of cavalry that raided throughout all of Syria and
returned to Persia laden with spoils and the

Roman Emperor Valerian. who was captured at Edessa, where Syria joins
Asia Minor. It was only after this that Odenathus of the Septimii tribe,
governor of Palmyra in Syria, crowned himself a puppet king under the
Romans and promptly drove the Persians back across Mesopotamia,
defeating them finally at Ctesiphon, the ancient Persian capital near present
Baghdad. He then declared himself king not only of Syria but of Cilicia,
Arabia, Cappadocia and Armenia. After his assassination in A.D. 266 his
son took his title, but his widow, Zenobia, took his power. She beautified
the capital and brought scholars and artists to her court, but also found time
to lead an army into Asia Minor, conquering Cappadocia, Galatia and most
of Bithynia. Then, with a great fleet and army she conquered Egypt. The
Roman Emperor Domitius Aurelianus soon reconquered this land, however,
and then his armies proceeded to beat Palmyra from a great central Syrian
city of 30,000 people to a desert village as it had been before and remains
yet today. (Ref. 48, 136)

IRAN

Persian cities sat on the silk route from China to the Roman Empire and
regardless of the local administration and any hostilities, the Persians
controlled this traffic. Rayy (near modern Tehran) as well as Herat (now
over the border in Afghanistan) became major cities and enjoyed great
prosperity. In about A.D. 224, Ardashir I, originally a feudal lord of Persia,
overcame the weakened Parthian Arsacid Dynasty and became king of all
the Persians, founding the Sassanian or Sassanid Dynasty. This family
strongly identified with the old Achaemenian Empire and Zorastrianism
was restored as the state religion. New conquests were undertaken as
Ardashir invaded Syria although his main purpose was to dethrone and kill
the Arsacid king who was ruling Armenia. Ardashir 's successor, Shapur I,
(240-271) built a new city in his home province of Fars, the Sassanian
"Versailes", and he also promoted agriculture and several irrigation systems.
As mentioned above, however, he is most famous for his extensive cavalry
raids throughout Syria and his capture of the Roman Emperor Valerian at

Edessa. Thousands were killed in Antioch and Tarsus was about destroyed.
Victory may have resulted as the result of the Persian cavalry's use of
damask steel sabres, superior to anything made in the West. (See
SUBCONTINENT OF INDIA, this chapter). Shapur eventually went down
to defeat at the hands of Odenathus, an Arab prince from Palmyra, whose
troops chased the Persians back and defeated them at Ctesiphon, as we have
noted. (Ref. 48, 18)

In A.D. 242 Mani began his religious teachings, taking Zorasterism as a
base but accepting Moses, Jesus and Buddha as prophets. He traveled to
Turkistan, India and China and his ideas spread widely, becoming a fruitful
root-stock of Christian heresies for almost a thousand years. (Ref. 229) At
first Shapur favored Mani, but later he was banished and when Shapur's
second son, Varahran I became king in 272 Mani was executed. (Ref. 119)

ASIA MINOR: ANATOLIA

TURKEY

The entire Anatolian peninsula was part of the Roman Empire, but this was
an era of multiple raids from both north and south, with the Goths and other
Russian tribes coming down to ravage the cities of the Black Sea such as
Pontus, Chalcedon, Nicomedia, etc., while the Persians later overran Cilicia
and Cappadocia. It was in Edessa, then part of Syria, but near the modern
city of Urfa, Turkey that the Persian king Shapur captured Valerian. This
was somewhat nullified as the Queen Mother Zenobia temporarily took
over additional territory in this region. By the end of the century Roman
rule had been pretty well restored and the Emperor Diocletian established
his capital for the entire empire at Nicomedia. Greek was written and
spoken in this eastern Roman capital except for purely administrative and
occasional literary purposes. The great plague which reached most of the
empire in the middle of the century struck Pontus particularly violently.
(Ref. 136, 127, 222)

ARMENIA

The puppet king, Chosroes, was of the Iranian Arsacid line, and as noted
above, he was murdered by the Persian Ardashir I and Armenia came under
the Persian wing. In A.D. 284, after Queen Zenobia had finally been
defeated, Emperor Diocletian helped Tiridates, the son of Chosroes, to
again ascend the throne of this country.

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ARABIA AND JORDAN

The Abyssinians had conquered the southern angle of the peninsula by 362
and there were still some fairly prosperous towns along the Red Sea. In the
north there was an increasing level of civilization with more and more
contact with Syria, while in the desert the nomad tribes gradually
encroached on the towns. (Ref. 8)

MEDITERRANEAN COASTAL AREAS OF ISRAEL AND
LEBANON & IRAQ AND SYRIA

The eastern portion of Syria, comprising essentially present day Iraq and
ancient Mesopotamia was under the domination and actually a part of the
new Persian Empire. The western part of Syria, including the areas of
Lebanon and Judea, were part of Byzantium, the eastern realm of the fading
Roman Empire. Monophysite Christianity, which began a period of extreme
ascetism among many monks of the East, became widely accepted in Syria
and particularly in the Lebanon region. Judging from the irrigation systems,
the population of Mesopotamia may well have reached its peak at this time,
while epidemics and other problems were cutting the Italian Roman
population (Ref. 140) The Bible and various theological works were
translated into Syriac and then a copious original literature was developed.
In central Syria, since the cities of Palmyra and Hatra had been destroyed in
the previous century, the silk route now went farther north from Antioch on
the coast through northern Syria to Seleucia, an ancient city now gone,
which was located near present day Baghdad. (Ref. 127, 137)

IRAN: PERSIA

In the first decade of this century Persia was invaded by Arabs from
Mesopotamia and Bahrain and Ctesiphon was sacked. At 17 years of age
Shapur Il became emperor and he immediately invaded Arabia and exacted
a terrible revenge upon the Arabs. Then between 337 and 376 he engaged in
three wars with Rome, with neither side gaining any great advantage. When
Shapur II died in 379 the Persian Empire was at its peak, controlling all
territory that Darius I had ruled a thousand years before. Zorastrianism, tied
up with the political destiny of the empire, was winning against both
Judaism and Hellenization.

Iranian society in this Sassanian period consisted essentially of three
classes:

(1) WARRIORS. The land owners, great and small, furnished the heavy
cavalry and the mounted archers who were the effective strength of the
army. The infantry consisted of their vassals and serfs. At the top of this
class were seven great families dating back to the Achaemenid times and
holding hereditary rights to various offices. The king was a member of one
of these great families and the internal history of Iran continued to be one of
nobles jockeying for power.

(2) PRIESTS: MAGI. The Avesta, written sometime during Sassanian
domination, ordered every aspect of life in Persia. The Magi had great
authority, including some judicial function. They owned large estates and
had considerable political influence when Mazdaism finally became the
dominant religion in the next century.

(3) PEASANTS AND CRAFTSMEN. This was the most numerous group
but it had no power and no chance to rise in rank. The great majority were
peasants, almost at the level of serfdom.

In the ruling class there was much family intermarriage, father-daughter and
brother- sister marriages being common. After Shapur II, there began a
decline in royal power and many dynastic disputes, raging over 1 1/2
centuries. In addition there were frequent wars with the Byzantine branch of
the remains of the Roman Empire and in 395 large hordes of Huns crossed
the Don, then the Caucasus and entered Persia, driven perhaps by famine.
They took thousands of prisoners for later sale as slaves and drove off many

herds of cattle. One group crossed the Euphrates and were beaten back by
Romans, another retreated from Ctesiphon as the Persian army approached
and a third group ravaged Asia Minor and Syria. (Ref. 119, 48, 127)

ASIA MINOR: ANATOLIA

In this and the next century it is of value to the reader to study the sections
on ASIA MINOR, THE BALKANS, AUSTRIA, HUNGARY AND ITALY
all together, as the interactions between these areas is almost continuous.

Our paragraph about Byzantium in the last chapter closed with the
ascension of Diocletian to the throne of the eastern portion of the Roman
Empire, as he gave Maximian control of the western portion. Both of these
men abdicated in A.D. 305. The Roman political and military scenes
become very complicated from this point on, with the two halves of the
empire ruled sometimes by one man, but at other times two or four shared
the power as co-emperors, west and east. The designation of various
generals as Caesars and prefectures does not help in the clarification. We
shall try to give only the salient points, and avoid getting bogged down in
minute details. Constantius and Galerius succeeded Diocletian and
Maximian, but Constantius died a year later and his son, Constantine, was
proclaimed emperor by his troops, while just shortly thereafter Maxentius,
son of Maximian, seized power in Italy. Constantine overthrew Maxentius
just outside Rome in 312, making himself master of the West and eleven
years later he took over the East, also. Thus, by 323 he had become the sole
emperor and his inauguration was given in Constantinople in 330 after he
had spent four years constructing it on the site of ancient Byzantium.
Known subsequently as Constantine the Great this man in the meantime
waged war all across southern Europe, in Greece and the East and since
many of his soldiers were already Christians, he used their crosses as his
battle ensignia. Finally he became an avowed Christian although he
attended no rituals and it is possible that his conversion was more of a
political maneuver than a spiritual one. Its effects were nevertheless far
reaching and promoted the spread and organization of the Church
throughout the Roman domain. (Ref. 137, 48, 127, 222)

Constantine gave the Church vast estates and buildings, empowered bishops
to make slaves of Roman citizens and permitted civil suits to be transferred

to bishops’ courts if either party so desired. (Ref. 213)

Besides being constantly at war with Persia under Shapur II, Constantine I
had to put up with bitter battles which developed over creeds in his newly
recognized Christian hierarchy. He attempted to resolve these differences by
calling a council of Nicaea which proceeded to establish the orthodox creed
that in essence said that the Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God, begotten not
made, being of one essence with the Father, was made flesh for the
salvation of men. Of some 318 bishops present, only two plus the
unrepentant Arius, refused to sign the formula. These were exiled and an
imperial edict ordered that all books by Arius should be burned. All
Christians were agreed that pagan temples must be closed but Arianism
remained in Asia Minor and throughout the Near East and "paganism" in
the form of Mithraism, Neoplatonism, Stoicism and Cynicism was
widespread. Constantine also had serious financial troubles so that he had to
confiscate properties of cities and temples and finally impoverished the
middle class and the peasants by tremendous taxation and land transfers. By
A.D. 350, some years after his death, there were 80,000 people getting free
bread in Constantinople. (Ref. 48)

After a few murders of other claimants to the throne, Constantine's son,
Constantius II, became emperor in 337 but he ruled for only nine years and
accomplished nothing except to choose as Caesar (a top general) the half-
brother of Gallus, Flavius Claudius lulianus, soon to be known as Julian. He
was given command against the Alamanni and the Franks, but after five
years he apparently sought greater things and marched against Constantius.
The latter died before Julian reached him so he became emperor in 361
without further difficulty. Known as Julianus, the Apostate, he reversed the
trend to Christianity, upholding paganism while attempting to make
Mithraism the supreme religion. He was a learned man who devoted much
time to books and the study of philosophies, while allowing full freedom to
Christians. At his death in 364 while fighting with his armies in Persia,
Hellenism and its philosophies disappeared for 11 centuries. After some
further juggling of east and west emperors elected by their troops,
Valentinianus I became emperor in the west in 364 and he named his
brother Valens as co-Augustus in the east. He had his hands full battling
Visigoths who won independence north of the Danube. All of the emperors'

most dangerous enemy, however, still remained the Sassanid Dynasty of
Persia, and this squeezing effect with the Goths in the north and the
Persians in the south resulted in Byzantium giving up part of Armenia and
Georgia in the Causasus to Persia. Finally in 378 the Visigoths crossed the
Danube 80,000 strong, engaged the eastern co-Augustus, Valens, in a great
battle at Adrianople and the latter was killed. Gratianus appointed
Theodosius, a strong Christian and son of a successful general in Britain, to
succeed him as co-emperor of the East. He immediately banned the practice
of all current religions except Christianity (although it was still in a
minority at the time) and handed over all Christian churches to the
Trinitarians (Athanasiasts), being greatly influenced by St. Ambrose of
Milan. When Theodosius massacred 7,000 people at Thessalonica in Greece
in revenge for an insurrection, however, Bishop Ambrose forced him to do
penance, thereby emphasizing the independence of the western church from
imperial domination. When the Frank Count Arobast murdered the western
emperor, Valentinian II, and set up the pagan Eugenius as Roman Emperor
in 392, Theodosius, with Gothic auxiliaries, led by Alaric, defeated and
killed both Arbogast and Eugenius at Frigidus in northeastern Italy.
Theodosius died soon after this victory and he was the last emperor serving
jointly with a western counterpart.

Following the death of Theodocius in 396 the eastern and western emperors
were completely separate and served only in their own regions. The East
benefited from this split, retaining the taxes and tribute that had previously
been remitted to Rome. Egyptian wheat was rerouted to Constantinople and
the new capital, which incorporated the city of Byzantium, soon grew to
metropolitan size. Theodocius' son, Arcadius, governed the East under the
prefect Rufina, but on their return from Italy Theodocius' eastern army
assassinated Rufinus and effective rule fell to the eunuch, Eutropius, who in
turn was murdered in 399 in part by a conspiracy of Goths in Phrygia. H.G.
Wells (Ref. 229, page 414) wrote that this new Byzantium was a damaged
resumption of the Hellenic Empire of Alexander, although the monarch had

At the base of the Anatolian peninsula, Armenia, under Terdat, a pro-
Roman ruler, became the first entirely Christian state as it adopted the
Monophysite variation in A. D. 303. Chosrov II reigned from 330 to 338

but by a treaty of 386 following one of the innumerable Roman-Persian
wars, Armenia was divided between Byzantium and Persia, the latter
getting the larger share. The Armenian alphabet was introduced by St.
Mesrop about A.D. 400, such alphabet containing 38 letters and designed to
handle the Armenian variation of the Indo-European language. (Ref. 8)

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ARABIA AND JORDAN

Arabia was primarily a Bedouin land, with social organization pivoting
around the tribe. Both Byzantine and Persia tried to protect themselves by
supporting new buffer Arab border states and through these buffer zones,
foreign customs and ideas filtered into the world of the nomads. Far south
Arabia remained a civilized, Christian community with close ties to
Ethiopia. In North Yemen repairs were attempted on an old earthen dam
stretching some two thousand feet across the Wadi Dhana, using 20,000
men, 14,600 camels and 12,000 donkey teams. The dam diverted flood
waters to irrigate about 4,000 acres of land but it lasted for only about a
century. (Ref. 82)

MEDITERRANEAN COASTAL AREAS OF ISRAEL AND
LEBANON & IRAQ AND SYRIA

This region continued as part of the Byzantine Empire. Monophysitism
dominated in western Syria while Nestorians were prominent in the east
until expelled in the later part of this century.

IRAN: PERSIA

The Sassanid Empire continued to flourish and after a treaty with
Byzantium there was relative peace and tolerance of Christians. The
Nestorians were particularly prevalent in Iran in the latter part of the
century after they had been run out of the Byzantine area, proper, and later

out of Syria. The city of Bandor Shahpur on the Persian Gulf was the site of
a great hospital and translation center of Greek texts to Arabic. The
Nestorians were active in these translations and in founding the hospital.
Particularly famous was Jurgis Bukht-Yishu, first of six generations of
translators.

The century began with Zorastrianism continuing as the major religion with
taints of Hellenism still remaining, but now appeared Mazdak, a new
preacher, reviving a kind of Manichean doctrine, which was translated into
a kind of communism. It caused much political trouble for Kavadh I, who
originally had supported the doctrine. This king married a Hepthalite (also
spelled Ephthalite and sometimes called "White Hun", probably
erroneously [footnote |princess of the tribe that had taken over the old
Kushan territory and who were beginning to absorb much land from Persia.
These people, as well as Chionite nomads were threatening from the north
most of this century. One of the most famous of the Sassanian kings was
Vahram V (also Varahran), surnamed Gor, great hunter, poet and musician,
who left the administration of the country to his chief magus, Mihr Shapur
(A.D. 420-440).

The origin and ethnic affinities of these people is unknown but they
probably have no relationship to the "Attilic" Huns which will be described
later in this chapter. The Ephthalites may have been of Tibetan or Turkish
origin. (Ref. 38, 127)

In A.D. 484 the Persian army was finally annihilated and their king killed
by the Hepthalites. During their period of control of Persia in the remainder
of the century an exiled Persian, Kobad, who had been living among the
invaders, took the throne, only to be driven off again by his own nobles in
489, perhaps because he supported the priest Mazdak's theories. (Ref. 137,
8, 38, 119)

ASIA MINOR: ANATOLIA

TURKEY (BYZANTIUM)

As in the previous chapter, the reader is advised to study the sections on
THE BALKANS, CENTRAL EUROPE and ITALY along with this section.

For the two centuries just preceding, the Byzantine monarchy had kept up
Roman institutions and had continued to use Latin in its courts, but in this
century the central administration stopped the use of Latin in favor of
Greek. Little was accomplished from the political and social standpoint
during the entire century. For the sake of completeness only, the rulers of
Byzantium are listed as follows:

The Dynasty of Theodosius The Dynasty of Leo
395 - 408 Arcadius 457 - 474 Leo I

408 - 450 Theodosius II 474 - Leo II

450 - 457 Marcian 475 - 491 Zeno

491 - 518 Anastasius

As this century began Goths, under a former Roman army general, Gainas,
occupied Constantinople. They were soon eliminated, however, by mobs
and the imperial army and thereafter Goths were not allowed to serve in the
imperial forces as units, but only as individuals. When Theodosius II began
to rule he was young and weak and the empire was actually controlled by
his Empress Eudoxia. The reign was a tranquil period, however, and even
the wars with Persia ceased. An official collection of imperial legislation
was published as the Codes Theodosianus. The great issue of the
administration was Nestorianism versus Monophysitism. In 428 Theodosius
made Nestorius the patriarch of Constantinople and the latter then startled
the Christian world by preaching that Mary was not to be considered the
Mother of God, but only Mary, mother of the human Christ, and thus
another heresy was started. At the third Ecumenical Council of Ephesus of
431 Monophysitism triumphed and Nestorius was excommunicated and
banished to the Libyan desert where he subsequently died. His followers

established the Nestorian Church and fled to eastern Syria and later to
Persia, eventually founding communities in Balkh and Samarkand, in India
and even China. Scattered through Asia a few survive to this day, still
denouncing Mariolatry. (Ref. 127, 8, 49)

The one thorn of Theodosius’ otherwise peaceful reign was the invasion of
the Balkans by Asiatic Huns which had begun in the winter of A.D. 404-
405 under the leadership of Uldin. By 408 they were terrifying the Balkan
population. When many of the Huns defected to the Byzantine troops in the
area, however, Uldin retreated for the moment. Periodic invasions of Thrace
recurred, however, through the fourth decade of this century, requiring large
tribute payments from the Byzantine government. There were still more an
attack in 441 and 442 and the eastern Roman army, under a Goth General
Aspar, was beaten time and again. The Huns broke off the engagement only
after arrangements for large tribute payments by Theodosius. After the
Huns retreat Theodosius stopped the agreed upon payments, probably not
because of a lack of funds. It has been estimated that the average yearly
revenue of the Eastern Empire at that time was about 170,000 pounds of
gold, with only 45,000 pounds of this spent on the army. At any rate,
because of the lack of payment the greatest Hun invasion of all in Thrace
was launched in 447 with Attila at its head. Theodosius begged for terms
and Attila got 6,000 pounds of gold due as back payment as well as a
promise of 2,100 pounds annually in the future. At today's value, this would
be in the neighborhood of $29,000,000 and over $10,000,000 respectively.
In addition, there was to be a "demilitarized zone" from Pannonia to Sistova
(north Bulgaria). (Ref. 127)

The fourth Ecumenical Council met at Chalcedon in 451 under Theodosius'
successor, Marcian, and this time Monophysitism was condemned as well
as Nestorianism, setting the stage for continued religious controversy for
another two centuries. On Marcian's death, the barbarian General Aspar was
influential in getting a military tribune, Leo I, as emperor. He, too, had Hun
trouble as Attila's son, Dengizic, led an invasion into Thrace again. This
time, however, many of the Huns did not join him and in 469 the eastern
army defeated him, killed him and took his head to Constantinople. This
was the last organized Hun expedition but many of those men subsequently

joined the eastern army forces where they became known as "Massagetae".
(Ref. 127)

When Zeno became emperor in 474 he followed policies which increased
the schism between the eastern and western domains of the old Roman
Empire and the western position completely collapsed in 476.

ARMENIA

The Monophysite Christians of Armenia now formed their own church,
independent of Constantinople, and called it simply the Armenian Church.
Whereas they had formerly used the Greek language, they now got a
national alphabet and had the Bible translated into Armenian. This country
had a fully developed feudal system from royal families down to peasants,
but at this time the nation was nominally subservient to Persia. The people
revolted against Persia when heavy taxes were levied and there were some
religious persecutions, but the revolt was not successful. In 455 and 456 the
Persians forcibly converted Armenia to Zorasterism but near the end of the
century the Armenian leader, Vahan, helped the Persian King Volagases in a
civil war and in an Edict of Toleration, the Christians were again granted
freedom.

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The Near East: A.D. 501 to 600

THE NEAR EAST

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ARABIA AND JORDAN

By 525 Judaism had gained such a foothold in the Himyarite kingdom in
the south that the rulers themselves began to persecute the Christian
population. This was the justification which the Abyssinians (Ethiopians)
used to invade south Arabia between 525 and 530, conquering the
Himyarites and leaving an Abyssinian governor. By about 570, however,
the Persians conquered and controlled the whole of Arabia. (Ref. 82, 222)

MEDITERRANEAN COASTAL AREAS OF ISRAEL AND
LEBANON, & IRAQ AND SYRIA

The western portion of this large area continued to share in the fate of
Byzantium. Christian vandalism against the Jews and Samaritans] footnote],
which had started in the preceding century, now increased with destruction
of synagogues and temples. An earthquake of 526 did not help matters
when it killed 200,000 to 300,000 people in Antioch. (Ref. 222) The Jews
and Samaritans revolted in 529 and again in 560 and finally welcomed the
invasion of the Persians as they extended their empire once again about
570. The Jews took this opportunity to destroy a few churches and
Christians in revenge. Of course, the entire eastern portion of this Syrian
area, that is, most of present day Iraq, belonged to the great Persian Empire
throughout this period.

The Samaritans were remnants of Babylonians and Syrians whose ancestors
had migrated to Palestine nearly a thousand years before. They were not
Jews but used the Pentateuch as their holy book, without accepting any
other part of the Bible

IRAN: PERSIA

King Kobad, previously expelled by his own nobles, returned to the throne
in 501 and waged the first war with Byzantium. But his previous friends,
the Ephthalites, raided from the northeast and he had to sue for peace with
the Christians before he could finally expel the Asian invaders from Persia
in A.D. 513. The 2nd Byzantine-Persian War followed from 524 to 531 and
at the end of that conflict Kobad's son, Chosroes I (or Khosru or Khosrau),
became the greatest of the Persian kings. To insure his dynasty, like many
another Asian monarch, he executed all of his brothers and their male
offspring with one exception and included Mazdak and all of his followers.
It was he who finally completely defeated the Ephthalites in central Asia in
Do7.

Pahlavi, the Indo-European language of Parthian Persia, was still in use and
Zorastrianism was the official religion, with the God Ormuzd and the devil
Ahriman. Chosroes' reign was tolerant, however, to Nestorian and other
brands of Christians and to Jews. He actually helped the Nestorians to
establish a library. The great Persian Medical School at Gondishapur also
had a famous medical library containing works from Byzantium and
perhaps some of Hippocrates' works came through here to the Arabic world.
In this hey-day of the Persian Empire, the University of Judi-i-Shapur
became the greatest intellectual center of the world, with teachers and
scholars from all over Europe and Asia. Roads and villages were rebuilt and
there was reform of the fiscal system and taxation methods. Many irrigation
systems were completed and the famous metal-workers of Antioch, Syria
were brought to Iran. (Ref. 15, 8)

After the Persians had driven to the Mediterranean coast and taken all of the
Arabian peninsula, Byzantine allied with the Turks drifting down from the
Eurasian border,- but they still could not defeat the Persians. At the end of
the century, however, the Persian Empire became divided into four great
satrapies: the east, comprised of Khosasan and Kerman; the west, including
Iraq and Mesopotamia; the north, made up of Armenia and Azerbaijan; and
the south, which contained Fars and Khuziasan. Wars continued on all
borders until the end of the century.

ASIA MINOR

TURKEY: BYZANTIUM

The zenith of the Byzantine Empire was reached under the Emperor
Justinian who was born in Sofia, possibly of Slavic peasant parents. He
encouraged the oriental conception of royalty as divine, but labored to
reunite the western and eastern Christian churches. He was strongly
influenced by his wife, Theodora, a woman also of humble origins. The
Justinian Code of Laws have remained in history as part of the Canonical
Laws of the Catholic Church. Constantinople remained the greatest market
and shipping center in the world, with companion harbors on the Black Sea
and a direct sea route established through the Red Sea to India. Although
the secret of silk was jealously guarded in the Far East, by various means
Justinian introduced silk worms, white mulberries, the method of
unwinding cocoons and the weaving of the thread, into Byzantium so that
he also became the emperor of silk. From this the western Christian empire
earned a fortune which it guarded for centuries. (Ref. 260)

On the religious front the church was unrelenting, the Jewish deuterosis was
outlawed and there were expulsions of Jews with some massacres in
Antioch in 592 and in Jerusalem after the turn of the century. Justinian's
General Belisarius reconquered North Africa and southern Spain from the
Vandals and most of Italy from the Goths, bringing the empire to its greatest
geographical extent. (Ref. 49) Many of the units of the Byzantine army of
this 6th century were remnants of the Huns called "Massagetae". They were
intemperate drinkers and often difficult to control, although fierce warriors.
(Ref. 127)

In the years 542 and 543 a great epidemic, of ten called the "Plague of
Justinian" hit Asia Minor. This was definitely bubonic plague, penetrating
from an original focus either in northeastern India or central Africa and
spreading around the Mediterranean by ship. Necessary to this spread was
the appearance of the black rat from its native India, along with its fleas.
Procopius reported that 10,000 people died daily in Constantinople at the
peak of the epidemic and the disease raged for four months. The political

effect was great and the imperial power was weakened. Another epidemic
in 655 and famine in 569, along with attacks by Bulgars and Avars from the
Balkan area, all contributed to dissolution of the empire soon after
Justinian's death. (Ref. 140, 213)

ARMENIA

Armenia was caught up in most of the wars between Byzantium and Persia.
For the most of this era it was subservient to Persia, but late in the century
both Georgia and Armenia were again partitioned with Byzantium getting a
large part of the latter. Because of Byzantine help to the Persian King
Chosroes II in an internal fight, this monarch, once reestablished on the
Persian throne, ceded Iberia and nearly all of Armenia to the

Eastern Roman Empire in A.D. 591, thus allowing Byzantine troops
stationed there to return to defend the Balkans against the Avars. (Ref. 49)

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The Near East: A.D. 601 to 700

THE NEAR EAST (AN AMAZING CONQUEST OF THE
NEAR EAST BY ISLAMIC ARABS)

Back to The Near East: A.D. 501 to 600

It was in this century that the people of Kurdistan were converted to the
Sunni variety of Islam. The Kurds are a people closely related ethnically to
the Persians, who have tried through the ages to keep themselves intact as
sheep-raising and rug weaving nomads, without respect to political
boundaries. Kurdistan embraces the present day areas of east TURKEY,
Soviet Armenia, northeast Iraq and northwest Iran. (Ref. 38)

ARABIA AND JORDAN

Muhammad (or Mohammed) was born in the south of Arabia of poor
parentage early in the century. He married wealth and soon began to teach a
new religion, taking as basic beliefs the monotheism of the Jews. He
accepted Jesus as a prophet and formulated a new creed of behavior for his
fellow Arabs. He had the visionary power of a seer, the astuteness of a
master politician and a poet's mastery of language. (Ref. 83) By the time of
his death in A.D. 636 his followers had already become almost fanatical in
their zeal to spread the new faith and their armies poured out of the Arabian
Peninsula to sell the religion by force of arms. The Arabs' military success
approached the miraculous as they subdued the greatest kingdoms with
small armies made up of mounted men on the famed Arabian horses. (Ref.
122)

MEDITERRANEAN COASTAL AREAS OF ISRAEL AND LEBANON & IRAQ AND SYRIA

The early part of the century was a period of some general decay in this
entire area, with Persia and Byzantium more or less splitting control. At the
death of Emperor

Maurice of Byzantium at the hands of his own soldiers, Chosroes IT of
Persia went on a conquering spree, taking Roman Mesopotamia in 607-615,
then Armenia and some of Anatolia itself. But the pestilences which had
visited the Romans and Persians alike from 542 on may explain in great
part the little resistance their forces offered the Moslem eruption in 634. By
the time of the Arab conquest Syria, in general, was an impoverished and
stricken land. Damascus, as well as Jerusalem, had not recovered from the
effects of the previous long and terrible sieges. Palmyra stood empty. In
Mesopotamia there is some evidence that many irrigation canals had been
abandoned, probably from a lack of labor supply due to the plague, before
the Moslems had even arrived and it is doubtful if the Arabs actually
destroyed much. (Ref. 137, 140)

The first incursion of Arabs into Iraq occurred in A.D. 633 with forces
under Khalid ibn-al-Walid, although the main advance was a little to the
west into Syria. They defeated the Byzantines in a last battle at Yarmuk in
636 and Jerusalem capitulated in 638. The chief administrator of Iraq and
the coastal region from 644 to 656 was Othman (also Uthman) of the
Omayyad (also Umayyad) family. Using his nepotism as an excuse, troops
from Iraq and Egypt assassinated Othman in Medina in 656 and he was
succeeded by Ali, the prophet's cousin and son-in-law. Mo'awiya, an
Omayyad governor of Syria, disputed this succession, proclaimed himself
caliph[footnote] in Jerusalem in 660 and went on to establish a capital at
Damascus in 661, initiating the Omayyad Caliphate. Descendants of Ali
continued intermittent warfare with the combatants eventually ending up as
the northern (Omayyad) Arabs against the southern. The latter were chiefly
the Shi'ites[footnote] and by the end of the century these partisans were
more or less in control of Arabia, Persia and Mesopotamia. In addition, the
old line of demarcation between Roman Syria and Persian Iraq or
Mesopotamia survived this Moslem conquest. A strong sense of difference
between the populations at large in these two provinces, fostered by the
differences in their respective administrations easily coalesced with long
standing rivalries in the two Arab garrisons. Many civil wars resulted. (Ref.
2, 119)

A caliph is the religious and civil leader of a Moslem state and the region he
controls is a caliphate. In contrast an emir may be just an Arab chieftain or
a favored descendant of Mohammed

The Shi'ites (or Shiah) represent one of the two great divisions of the
Moslem faith. They believe that only the descendants of Ali are eligible to
be caliphs

As the Arab armies overran Mesopotamia and Iran, sizable groups of Jews
were pretty well left alone as protected minorities. All aspects of their civil
and religious life were administered by Jewish officials in accordance with
the Babylonian Talmud. At this time Hindu numerals were in use in Syria
and later these became known as "Arabic numerals". (Ref. 49)

IRAN: PERSIA

As the century began Chosroes II ruled the Persians with avarice, suspicion
and cruelty and a ruinous taxation to support his own splendid living. His
armies fought their way to the Bosporus and to Egypt and came within sight
of Constantinople but some 10 years later Emperor Honorius, in alliance
with the Khazars just east of the Caspian, struck back, attacking the Persian
homeland (623-624). The Persians retaliated by attacking Constantinople
once again with Avar help in 626 but the east Roman navy kept the two
land forces apart and the attack was a failure. Chosroes IT was then
murdered by his nobles and his son, Kavadh II, made the final peace,
surrendering Egypt, Palestine, Syria, Asia Minor and western Mesopotamia
back to the Byzantine Empire. Then pestilence broke out in Persia and
thousands died, including the king. There followed a fight for the throne
and in this atmosphere of disease and general moral decay and decline came
the Arab armies of Islam about 636 and Persia quickly became part of the
Moslem realm. The decisive action with the Arabs occurred at Al Qadisiya,
Iraq, when the Persian army was literally smashed, allowing Arab capture
of the capital, Ctesiphon (very near Selucia in Mesopotamia), in A.D. 635,
thus opening the road to the main Iranian plateau. After the take-over a few
Persian nobles maintained their independence in the mountains of
Tabaristan at the south end of the Caspian. (Ref. 8, 137)

The Arabs did not force their conquered subjects to embrace Islam but did
require them to accept the Koran as divine teaching and obliged them to
learn Arabic, thus building an empire united by a common tongue. (Ref.

137, 222) There were probably many factors in the easy fall of the great
Persian Empire to the surging Arab armies. In addition to the factors listed
in the paragraph above, it should be realized that both Byzantium and

Sassanian Persia had exhausted themselves battling each other for many
years. But there was also an economic cause of decline as the use of the
Silk Route to China diminished. The Byzantines had smuggled silk cocoons
from China and could now supply themselves with silk and the economy
suffered all along the old route.

Byzantium had become the original heir of classical Greek medicine but
during the persecutions of a number of learned heretics they fled to Persia,
where, at Jundishapur, they met Syrian, Persian and Hindu scholars and
working together, they translated many important works into Syriac, the
new language of learning in the Near East. When Persia fell to the Arabs,
many works of medicine were then translated from Syriac into Arabic,
including large works of Galen. (Ref. 211)

ASIA MINOR

TURKEY

After Emperor Justinian's death at the close of the preceding century (595)
the eastern Roman Empire collapsed with nothing left except a few Asiatic
ports, some fragments of Italy, Africa and Greece. The capital itself was
besieged by the Persians under Chosroes II, helped in the north by an army
of Avars. In A.D. 602 the "Roman" army fighting the Avars revolted,
returned to Constantinople and murdered Emperor Maurice, while the Avars
devastated the Balkans. The cross-bow reached Byzantium from central
Asia at about this time, perhaps borrowed from the Avars. (Ref. 137, 213)

The whole of the Asia Minor peninsula had been ploughed and furrowed by
Persian armies and the great cities had been plundered and sacked, but the
Byzantines still had an unbeaten navy and after 10 years, Heraclius, the new
emperor, built a new army, sailed across the Black Sea, marched across

Armenia and attacked and defeated Persia from the rear (A.D. 624). The
victory was a hollow one, however, as the Arabs soon advanced into this
territory with Khalid ibn al-Walid defeating a Byzantine army at the battle
of the Yarmuk. The Byzantine frontiers were backed into Turkey, proper,
again and after 673 the Moslems even blocked Constantinople both by land
and sea, allowing it to be attacked every year for the next five. Only the
strength of the city's walls and the appearance of "Greek fire", an explosive
of unknown composition, saved the empire.

Although we have used the terms "Byzantine" and "Byzantium" freely in
the last few chapters, actually it was not until the second half of this century
that earlier historians applied these names in reference to the eastern Roman
Empire. "Byzantion" was the old Greek name for Constantinople, and as the
language of this eastern empire became chiefly Greek, the term
"Byzantium" came into use. (Ref. 137)

ARMENIA

Throughout most of this century Armenia was in the middle of a three-
comered war involving Arabs, Khazars and Byzantines, but they managed
to remain virtually sovereign and zealously Christian. (Ref. 137) After first
being overrun by the eastern Roman army on its way to Persia, later the
Arabs invaded. In the first several decades the higher classes had great
prosperity incident to the exportation of manufactured goods and raw
mining products. It was also a period of intellectual activity with
philosophical, mathematical, astronomical and cartographic studies.
Ananias, of Shirak, was a great scientist. Many Armenians served as
mercenaries for Byzantium, particularly after the Arabs appeared on the
scene and by late century the mainstays of that army were Armenian. (Ref.
222)

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The Near East: A.D. 701 to 800

THE NEAR EAST
Back to The Near East: A.D. 601 to 700

During their three centuries of control the Arabs spread citrus fruits and
almonds across the Mediterranean, even to Spain, and rice and sugar cane
cuttings (from Persia) and saffron to the west. (Ref. 211) In addition they
had mastered techniques of spinning and weaving silk and they transmitted
seri-culture to the west via Sicily and Spain. Europe, however, was slow to
accept silk. (Ref. 122) About A.D. 750 the Arabs brought the decimal
system from India, but it was not used in Europe for another 500 years.
(Ref. 21)

This entire NEAR EAST, including our four designated territories of
ARABIA AND JORDAN, MEDITERRANEAN COAST AREAS, IRAQ
AND SYRIA and IRAN, were now all joined as the central area of the giant
Arabian Moslem Empire. As a result of military maneuvers the farmlands
of Palestine were laid waste, not to be entirely reclaimed for 12 centuries.
(Ref. 222) As the Moslem armies went through Spain and into France to be
stopped finally at Tours in 732, some dissension appeared at home and by
A.D. 749 there was open rebellion and a massacre of the Omayyad family
at their capital, Damascus.

The Omayyad caliphs had forgotten their desert origins and had
degenerated. Caliph al Walid II, who delighted in swimming and drinking
in a pool of wine, was killed in a Yemenite revolt in 744. The last of the
Omayyads was Marwan II, defeated and killed in the Battle of the Zab,
associated with the general massacre of the family. The caliphate then
became hereditary in the Abbasid family, beginning with Harun al Rashid,
who changed the capital from Damascus to the newly built city of Baghdad
in 763. The Abbasids stayed orthodox (Sunni), in spite of support they had
had from Shi'ites while coming into power. Baghdad was a circular city 1.5
miles in diameter, ringed by three lines of walls and its construction
involved 100,000 laborers. (Ref. 118, 137, 222)

Harun al Rashid was a great general, administrator and judge, who initiated
many changes including the abolition of all distinctions between Arab and
non-Arab Moslems. His administration supported any activity that would
bind minority groups tighter to the central authority. The main military
support came from Persian converts of eastern Iran and they out-fought the
Arab garrisons of Iraq and Syria. The Abbasids completed the process of
Persianizing the institution of the caliphate. Persians who served under the
caliph increasingly filled the high offices of state and the entire
administration was reorganized on Persian lines, with an efficient fiscal
system, a good postal service from one end of the empire to the other and
the establishment of trade routes to India, China, Ceylon and the
Mediterranean. The Islamic world was united by a single religion, single
language and a nearly unitary culture. The administration, culture and
geographical limits in the Near East were about the same as the old
Achaemenid Empire of the 6th century B.C. Paper mills were operating in
Baghdad and the harem-eunuch system was developed along with purdah
(veiled women). It should be noted that large numbers of east African
Negro slaves were purchased for agricultural work and they were harshly
treated. (Ref. 49, 220, 213)

Arabic, the youngest Semitic tongue, had in those early times a highly
developed oral, but virtually no written tradition. There was much poetry
depicting the life of the proud Bedouin. In the new Islamic Empire, Arabic
became the chief instrument of everyday speech as well as of culture,
replacing Aramaic, Coptic, Greek and Latin. Arabic also had enormous
influences on other Muslim languages, such as Persian and Turkish. (Ref.
68)

ASIA MINOR

Asia Minor is the one portion of our chosen NEAR EAST classification that
was not included in the paragraphs above, as the Christian Byzantines kept
a tenuous hold on a part of this region, necessitating a separate
consideration.

TURKEY

The Emperor Leo III (717) who announced the Iconoclastic policy, was an
Isaurian, the first oriental on the throne. He carved out a brief ghost of the
old Byzantine Empire, like Charlemagne's Empire in the West, turning the
Eastern Church into a sort of department of state. But this Byzantium was a
peculiar post-humous existence of the antique civilization and it was almost
sealed off from western Europe, partly by the Greek 456 language, partly by
a religious difference but chiefly because it didn't want to get involved in
the bloody feuds of the western barbarians. It had its own eastern barbarians
to deal with. In Constantinople and other cities a series of plagues and
earthquakes had drastically reduced the populations. Bubonic plague killed
200,000 between 732 and 736 and then after a terrible earthquake in 740
there were not enough local people left to repair the damage. Intermittent
warfare with the Arabs added to the drain of manpower. The second great
siege of Constantinople by the Arabs occurred in 717-718 with attacks by
both land and sea. The defenses held and Constantine V actually took the
offensive, carrying the war into Syria in 745 and destroying a great Arab
armada and reconquering Cyprus in 746.

Another campaign followed in Armenia and there were nine successive
campaigns against the Bulgars, with ultimate victory. (Ref. 222, 119)

Still, by 771 the Byzantine Empire had shrunk down to primarily the
western 2/3 of the Anatolian peninsula, along with Greece, Sicily, a few
islands and a narrow coast line along Dalmatia. Intermittent battles along
with pay-offs to the Arabs continued throughout the century and at the end
there was much family stress in the emperor's house, with Irene, mother of
Constantine VI, eventually having her son killed so that she could reign,
herself, as Empress.

ARMENIA

The Byzantium-Moslem wars and the cruel repressions which followed
each conquest or revolt had ruined and decimated this country. Under the
Abbasid rule from Baghdad the situation became even worse and the
population of Armenia was reduced to poverty.

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The Near East: A.D. 801 to 900

THE NEAR EAST

Back to The Near East: A.D. 701 to 800

ARABIA AND JORDAN

The original home of the Moslems was no longer the center of their activity,
but Muhammed's home area at Mecca remained their religious focal point.
At the end of this century this city was controlled by the heretical Shi'ite
sect. Moslem states which remained separate from the Abbasid Caliphate
were set up in eastern Arabia and Yemen. (Ref. 8 Additional Notes

MEDITERRANEAN COASTAL AREAS & IRAQ AND SYRIA

Early in the century, with the Abbasid Moslem administration at Baghdad,
there was remarkable growth of that city. By 814 it covered approximately
10 by 9 kilometers, the equivalent of modern-day Paris within the outer
boulevards. (Ref. 8) The caliph in Baghdad was the most powerful man on
earth and the Arab dhows rode the Indian Ocean from end to end. (Ref. 2)
The reign of Mamun the Great (813-833) was probably the most glorious of
all. Damascus and Baghdad each had observatories and a House of
Knowledge, with a rich library in the latter city. (Ref. 119) Later, even as
the administration began a decline there was still considerable progress in
the area in science, literature, astronomy and medicine. Translations
continued to be made from Syriac, Greek, Pahlavi and Sanskrit to Arabic.
Johannitus was one of the great translators of medicine just after 800. The
Hellenistic heritage was appropriated with some added original Moslem
contributions. The mathematician, Al-Kharizmi, for example, became the
first to use Indian (our Arabic) numerals to develop new forms of
calculation.

In the west of this region, Syria played its usual role as a border state
between two rival empires, this time the eastern Abbasids of Baghdad and
the Turkish controlled Egypt. Early in the century the former dominated but
about 870 Syria was conquered for Egypt by Ahmad ibn Tulun, one of the
Turkish mercenaries originally hired by the caliphs for personal body
guards and armies.

IRAN: PERSIA

As the Abbasid Caliphate eventually became corrupt and weakened, it gave
way in the last of the century in Persia to the native Saffarid Dynasty, which
also ruled part of Central Asia. One spot just south of the Caspian remained
separate as the Shi'ite Emir- ate of Alid (Descendant of Ali). (Ref. 137) The
Persian language was revived. Windmills with vertical sails fitted to wheels
turning horizontally were operating in Persia by this century and possibly
much earlier. These mills may have spread from Iran to China as well as to
the Mediterranean. (Ref. 260) Additional Notes

ASIA MINOR: ANATOLIA

TURKEY (BYZANTIUM)

Although the Emperor Nicephorus made peace with Charlemagne in 803 so
that the eastern empire could retain control of southern Italy, Venice and
Dalmatia, he could not pacify the Arabs who resumed raids in 804 through
806. As a result the Byzantines lost control of the seas and African
Moslems took Crete and invaded Sicily. The Rus took over the Black Sea
and by 860 attacked Constantinople itself. After 867 Byzantine fortunes
improved, however, as a capable general, Basil I, founded the Macedonian
Dynasty. Although born in Macedonia, Basil was actually of Armenian
descent. In the meantime, in spite of the more or less constant and losing
warfare, as is so often the case, the Greek Byzantine Empire at the same
time enjoyed a brief renaissance as the University of Constantinople was

restored and an Alexandrian Age of scholarship developed. Schools of law
and medicine, as well as philosophy and mathematics, were promoted. A
unique and formidable religious art accompanied the intellectual activity,
particularly after the Council of Sophia had allowed the return of
iconoclasm and instituted a new period of persecution of certain monks.

ARMENIA

The Christian kingdom of Armenia, which now included the old Georgian
kingdom of Iberia, kept independent of the Arabs by paying tribute. The
Bagratuni family established a dynasty under the title of "Prince of
Princes", built a capital at Ani and gave the country several generations of
progress and relative peace. Ashot I was the first independent sovereign,
ushering in Armenia's "Golden Age". (Ref. 137)

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Note:The most important early Islamic archaeological complex in Arabia,
outside Mecca and Medina, is the more than 600 mile-long Darb Zaubaida,
or pilgrim road. Actually it extended even father, to Baghdad, in
Mesopotamia. It was lavishly equipped with wells, catch basins, rest stops
and hostelries for pilgrims to Mecca. The name "Zubaida" was that of the
wife of Caliph Harun al Rashid. (Ref. 315)

Note:Slaves from Russia were at a premium in Persia in this century and
sold for as much as 600,000 dirhams. (Ref. 301)

The Near East: A.D. 901 to 1000

THE NEAR EAST
Back to The Near East: A.D. 801 to 900

Beginning about 960 Turkish tribesmen infiltrated the central regions of the
Islamic world, seizing power in Mesopotamia and Iran. We shall see that at
the same time other Turkish people invaded the Ukraine and on their other
flank charged the Chinese borders. (Ref. 279)

ARABIA AND JORDAN

The actual center of the Arab administration and religion had shifted out of
the Arabian peninsula. In the south a Shi'ite sect, the Qarmatians
(Carmathians) had revolted against the Abbasids in 899 and then remained
completely independent as the chief civilization center in that part of the
Arab world. (Ref. 137)

It seems appropriate at this time to consider, for a moment, the world effect
of the Arabian culture and particularly the Arabic language. Many Arabic
words were widely used throughout civilization at that time and have come
down to us in English. These include tariff, traffic, magazine, caravan,
bazaar, check, cipher and zero. Algebra, an Arabic word, was a subject
developed extensively, with both analytical and geometric solutions of
equations. Chemistry was almost created by the Moslems.

MEDITERRANEAN COASTAL AREA

These coastal areas, as well as much of western Syria, were now controlled
by the Egyptian caliphate, even through the periods of changing
administrations.

IRAQ AND SYRIA

The Abbasid Dynasty at Baghdad became weaker and weaker, while the
caliph, himself, was at the mercy of his Turkish "praetorians", whose chiefs
came and went in rapid succession. One after another of the provinces was
lost to the central government and finally, although the Abbasid Caliph
persisted as the Moslem religious head (comparable to the pope in the
Catholic world), the government of this near east area was taken over by the
Buwayhid Emirate, a pro-Shi'ite, Turkish dynasty. (Ref. 137) These Seljuk
(also Seljuq) Turks established themselves in Baghdad with a new kind of
Muslim state based on a partnership between men of the sword (chiefly
their own Turks) and bureaucrats and men of the law (Persians or Arabs),
all under the name of the Abbasid Caliphate. (Ref. 8) As Toynbee (Ref.
221), has written, the Abbasid name continued to be used by the usurpers of
its power, for seven centuries after the beginning of its decline, just by
virtue of its long tenure.

In spite of political decay, science and art continued to advance. Hospitals
and medical science were especially good and extensive, with 860 licensed
physicians in Baghdad alone, in A.D. 931. The hospital at Damascus had
elegant rooms and an extensive medical library. (Ref. 125) We mentioned
on page 479 that al-Khwarizmi introduced "Arabic" numerals from India. In
this century he used the decimal system and wrote standard treatises on al-
jabr (algebra).

IRAN: PERSIA

The Samanid Dynasty continued, ruling the adjacent part of Central Asia as
well as most of Persia, proper. The Persian language was used with
commercial activity at its height. Avicenna, of north Persia, was the greatest
of the medieval philosophers and also an excellent physician, writing the
"Canon of Medicine", which was used at Montpellier Medical School of
southern France when it was established in 1650. Al Razi (or Rhazes), a
Persian who wrote in Arabic, was considered the greatest of all medieval
physicians. The medical Arabists (which included Nestorian Christians,
Persians and Jews, who were not ethnic Arabs) relied both on writers of the

past, such as Galen, and on developing new aspects of pharmacy and
chemistry, including techniques of distillation, crystallization, solution,
sublimation, reduction, and calcination. They were good clinicians and
instructors, describing such things as scabies and mediastinal abscesses,
previously unrecognized. Midwives did much of the obstetric and
gynecological work, however. (Ref. 125)

The manufacture of astrolabes had already begun in Persia at Isfahan and
certain stylistic features of the earliest of these remained typical of eastern
Islamic astrolabes throughout their history. These were complicated
observational and computing instruments for astronomers. (Ref. 173) The
conversion to Islam of the old, heavy horse cavalrymen caused them to
abandon their old military ethic and as a result of this decrease in
protection, nomad raiding from the steppe began again with the appearance
of Turkish invaders. Chief among these were the Ghaznawids, under
commander-in-chief Subaktagin, formerly a slave in Khorasan. (Ref. 119)
Additional Notes

ASIA MINOR

TURKEY: BYZANTIUM

In spite of being ringed by enemies and having only a small geographical
area, this was a time of prosperity for the Macedonian Dynasty. The army
was good, there was little religious controversy, the provinces were well
governed and Constantinople was the richest city of the world. The
emperors continued to have Norse mercenaries as the Varangian guard.
There were continued Romano-Bulgarian wars, however, and this caused
some break-down in the Greek Orthodox Christian Society and some
territory continued to be lost. The great warrior Emperor Basil II began to
reign in 976, but Anatolia was soon overrun by great feudal barons who
eventually began to rise up against Basil. (Ref. 170)

As a side light of some medical interest, a 1978 study of skeletons dating
between the 7th and 12th centuries, from Kalenderhane Camii in Istanbul,

indicated good nutrition and general health of the individuals of this region.
The average height for males was 5'6" and for women 5'1". Mongoloid
features, such as shovel-shaped incisors, pinched foreheads, etc. occurred in
15 to 25%, suggesting mercenaries and merchants either from beyond the
Caucasus or from the Russian steppes. 69% of the males showed
osteoarthritic changes in the spine and 33% in the extremities. (Ref. 4)

ARMENIA

Sajid Emir of Azerbaijan, on the southwest coast of the Caspian, spent the
early century forming a new Armenian kingdom called "Vaspurakan", south
of Armenia proper, thus creating a rivalry that actually resulted in
Armenians killing Armenians. (Ref. 137) In the original country, however,
the reign of Gagik I marked the apogee of the material prosperity and
cultural revival of Armenia. The Bagratunis continued to reign until about
A.D. 1,000 when the central authority became weak and broke down with
the formation of about six virtually independent kingdoms. (Ref. 237)

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Note:Thanks to the success of the Samanids in taking prisoners, slaves
were now worth only 20 or 30 dirhams, compared to 600,000 dirhams in
the previous century. (Ref. 301)

The Near East: A.D. 1001 to 1100

THE NEAR EAST

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ARABIA AND JORDAN, MEDITERRANEAN COASTAL AREAS, &
IRAQ AND SYRIA

In the last chapter we witnessed the fragmentation of the once great
Abbasid Empire. Its breakdown paved the way for the takeover late in this
11th century by a new Turkish power coming out of the east - a new wave
of Seljugs, a clan of mercenary Ghuzz who had revolted from Ghaznavid
employ in 1037 and then soon took over entire control of the area, even of
the parent tribe. The remaining Ghuzz, as we shall see later, crossed on
west, north of the Caspian and were there known as "Cumans". The
Buwayhid Emirate was already breaking up as these new Seljugs arrived.
The latter were orthodox Sunnites and they defeated the Shi'ite rulers,
established themselves as the protectors of the Baghdad caliph and then
went on to the Mediterranean coast. By the time the surviving stragglers of
the 1st Christian Crusade reached the area of Jerusalem, intending to drive
out those invading Turks, they had already been pushed back temporarily
by the Fatimids of Egypt. Nevertheless, the good Christians slaughtered all
the Moslems they could reach and did establish a number of small states,
including the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem (A.D. 1099), none of which
lasted much more than a century. It was at this time that a group of Italian
merchants from Amalfi established an hostel to care for the pilgrims
visiting the shrines in Jerusalem, calling themselves "Knights Templar and
the Hospitallers", which was to become the most powerful military order
west of the Jordan River. (Ref. 86) Antioch was captured by Crusaders in
1098 and was ruled by them for nearly two centuries. The Christians called
all this land from northern Syria to the Red Sea "outremer", meaning
"beyond the sea". The Druze Muslim sect, descendants of ancient nomads,
settled in the mountains by the Jordanian border. Some were tall, fair and

blue-eyed, perhaps the remnants of intermarriage with Alexander's
Greeks[footnote] (Ref. 118)

At the present there are still about 300,000 of these people in Syria,
Lebanon and Israel, fighting Christians whenever they have the opportunity

Actually the primary interest of the Seljuqs was not the West but the control
of Baghdad and the rich lands of northern Syria, as well as the destruction
of the Fatimid Caliphate of Egypt, whose power threatened and whose
heretic Shi'ite beliefs were an abomination to the rigidly orthodox Turks.
(Ref. 137, 8, 68) Merchants in Iraq and adjacent regions had attained
greater wealth and social prestige in the 10th century and the first part of
the 11th than ever before but this was not to last long. (Ref. 279)

IRAN: PERSIA

At the beginning of this century Mahmud the Turk, leader of a remnant of
the Kirghiz from Tuirkistan, who had ruled from Ghazni, Afghanistan for a
century or so, took all of Persia and the Punjab in India, becoming the
greatest of the Afghan rulers. His realm was short-lived, however, as a rival
Turkish power, the Seljug branch of the Ghuzz came out of Turkistan and
Transoxiana and moving west, took the dynasties of Asiatic Islam one by
one. The greatest Seljug sultan was Malik-Shah. By 1055 the Ghaznavids
had been expelled from Persia and the Buwayhids conquered. The conquest
of southwestern Asia and even Asia Minor had been completed by 1090,
although by the following year the sultanate had again broken up into a
dozen warring factions. In the northern mountains of Persia (also in
northern Syria), one branch of Shi'ites, the Ismailis, doped up on hashish,
reigned with terror, murdering generals, viziers and even caliphs. They were
called hashshashin (Hashish eaters) and thus our word "assassins". (Ref. 2)

Omar Khayyam, a Persian living in the last half of this century, was one of
the greatest mathematicians of medieval times, developing a partial solution
of cubic equations.- He was also without equal in astronomy and
philosophy, an atheist, or advanced "free-thinker" and rejected all theology.
It is ironical that he is known chiefly to us as a composer of quatrains, such
as the Rubaiyah (from rubai - composed of 4), but all Persians in those days

were poets and this was only a diversionary activity of the great Khayyam.
Avicenna [footnote], about whom we made mention in the last century,
continued to work until his death in 1037. He was a Persian boy prodigy
who is said to have mastered the Koran by age 10. At age 21 he wrote a
scientific encyclopedia but his chief renown is as a physician, compiler,
commentator and writer. Some of his texts were used as the basis for
medical teaching, even in the British Isles, until the middle of the 17th
century. It is said that he mentioned coffee in his writings and the word is
definitely of Arabic origin, although the drink possibly originated in
Ethiopia. Kahwah, originally meaning "wine", was used also to mean
"coffee" and the later became kihwah. (Ref. 125, 211)

Avicenna's Persian name was Abu-ali al-Husayn ibn-Sina. (Ref. 125)

ASIA MINOR

TURKEY

Early in this century there was again a temporary resurgence of Byzantium,
with Emperor Basil II eliminating the west-Bulgarian Empire, then
reducing the Serbs to vassalage and conquering the Crimea (A.D. 1016) and
annexing the Vaspurakan Armenian Kingdom. (A.D. 1022). Under the
Macedonian emperors the structure of Byzantine society came closely to
resemble that of Sassanian Iran. Princely landowners with armed retinues
arose and there were confused clashes between rural and urban
aristocracies. In the end this proved fatal to the imperial bureaucratic power.

One of the decisive battles of history occurred in 1071 when the Byzantine
army was destroyed by the Sel jugs at Manzikert, north of Lake Van. After
that, western Anatolia was controlled by the Sultanate of Rum and the
Eastern Christian Empire consisted only of Constantinople, which had
nearly one million people, and Greece. All of Asia Minor was in the control
of the Seljuq Turks. Hereafter in this outline, Byzantium will be discussed
under the section on GREECE. (Ref. 137, 8)

ARMENIA

Even with fragmentation and multiple kingdoms, the wealth, industry and
trade of this area allowed of great prosperity. The people exported beautiful
carpets and textiles, furs and leather goods, lumber, fish, minerals including
gold, silver and copper, horses and mules, borax and salt. The monasteries
had acquired great riches and their schools led a cultural revival, with
skilled painters and incomparable scribes, poets and historians.

Gagik I, ruler of one of the major Armenian kingdoms, lived until 1020
when the country had reached the height of prosperity. In mid-century the
Byzantines, in a last gasp, took over this territory until the Seljug Turks
conquered the entire area, along with the rest of the Middle East. The
capital Ani fell in 1064 but many Armenians had already fled to the Taurus
mountains and were by-passed by the Turks. After Ani fell, others moved to
Cilicia, where they founded another kingdom called Lesser Armenia, an
entity which lasted until the 14th century. While Armenia, proper, was
divided, Georgia became unified and maintained independence until the
13th century. (Ref. 137)

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The Near East: A.D. 1101 to 1200

THE NEAR EAST

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ARABIA AND JORDAN, MEDITERRANEAN COASTAL AREAS, &
IRAQ AND SYRIA

In the north and east of this area the power of the Seljuqs waned as Sultan
Sinjar died and the entire Near East became divided among warring kings,
all Moslem. The western marches of the Sultanate of Hamadan were in the
control of various emirs or atabegs (guardians for infant princes) and they
were unable to prevent the founding of some Crusader states, such as
Edessa and Jerusalem. In A.D. 1121 the Georgians from the Caucusus
swept down as far as Tiflis. But a counter-blow by Zangi and his son
Nureddin, establishing the Zangid Sultanate, soon unified Syria, with the
absorption of Damascus and soon Egypt. (Ref. 137) The Crusaders kept on
trying for territory, even after Saladin controlled the entire area. France's
Philip captured Acre in 1191 and Richard of England negotiated with
Saladin in 1192 and obtained a 3 year truce allowing the Christians a
coastal strip between Joppa and Acre and access to Jerusalem. The Knights
Templar and Hospitallers continued their mercy and military presence in
that city. (Ref. 86)

IRAN: PERSIA

The century opened with the Seljuq Sultan of Hamadan controlling all of
Persia except a small region south of the Caspian which was still ruled by
the Assassins of Alamut. In the last half of the century, however, the
sultanate was shrunk by inroads from the Arabian Peninsula of a new
Abbasid Caliphate and from the west by the Zangid Sultanate which
extended out from Syria. New emirates from Armenia and Azerbaijain on
the western Caspian shore also appeared. (Ref. 8)

ASIA MINOR: ANATOLIA

TURKEY

The 1st Crusade left Anatolia in some confusion, with several small states,
but although the remnant of the Byzantine Empire still held the coastal
areas bordering the Aegean Sea (See map on page 575) the rest of Turkey
became de-Hellenized and the Moslem culture predominated. Byzantine
Emperor John II Comnenus did manage to exterminate the Patzinak Turks
in the Balkans in 1122 but this was followed by a four year war with
Venice. Peace with both Hungary and Venice occurred in 1126. (Ref. 222)
The Sultanate of Nicaea, which had originally taken the major part of the
Byzantine land, broke up with the Seljuqs holding the southwest half of
Iconium and the Danishmandids inheriting the region northeast of that. The
former soon broke up into still smaller emirates, however. (Ref. 137)

ARMENIA

Armenia proper was now ruled by Moslem Turks and Kurds but across the
Tarsus Mountains in Cilicia, the Armenian people formed the country of
Lesser Armenia, which now stood off all attacks and reached unparalleled
prosperity.

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If the reader is perusing this manuscript as a narrative and reading straight
through, it is suggested at this point that he stop and turn now to CENTRAL
AND NORTHERN ASIA, this chapter, as the great Mongol invasions
affected all parts of Eurasia and it will be important to have an
understanding of the Mongol people, their organization and their homeland
before attempting to interpret the remaining material in this 13th century.

ARABIA AND JORDAN

Except for the holy cities of Mecca and Medina, Arabia once again sank
into oblivion and remained only on the fringe of world activity.

COASTAL AREAS OF ISRAEL AND LEBANON

This area and particularly Jerusalem, was the scene of the Moslem-
Christian battles incident to the Crusades. The Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem,
which had been established in 1099, lasted less than a hundred years, but
the Ayyubid Sultanate of Syria still allowed Christians to have that city and
a small coastal corridor to prevent additional pin-pricking crusades. (Ref.
137) The Knights Templar and Hospitallers order of Italian Christian
Knights continued to dominate the narrow coastal area until Acre finally
fell to the Turks in 1291.

The Hospitallers then withdrew to Cyprus, taking sugar, which they had
encountered in Syria, with them. (Ref. 260) In the meantime the Mamluk
Turks from Egypt had defeated the Moslem forces from Syria in the great
battle at Ain Jalut, near Nazareth, on September 3, 1260.

IRAQ AND SYRIA

The small Abbasid Caliphate, which had existed for about a century at the
mouths of the Tigris and Euphrates was brutally crushed by the Mongols in
1258. The advancement of the Mongols into Iraq at that particular time can
be traced to the actions of Louis [X of France, who had sent a Crusade to
Egypt on the assumption that Eljigidei, in control of Persia, had turned
Christian and that the French from Egypt and those Mongols from Persia
could crush the Moslems between them. Unfortunately, the Mamluk
Baibars forced the starving French army to surrender and Mangku, the
Supreme Khan after 1251, ordered Hulegu, a grandson of Genghis, to
advance through Syria to Egypt. Syria had refused to be governed by
anyone not descended from Saladin and had crowned al-Nasir, King of
Aleppo, as their independent sultan. But Hulegu began the bombardment of
Baghdad on January 1, 1258, and by February 13th the city was sacked and
the Moslem population massacred. Some Christian soldiers from Georgia,
who had joined forces with Hulegu, took part in this with relish. The caliph
and his sons were sewn up in carpets and trampled to death by Mongol
horses. Finally the Mongol armies, themselves, were forced to abandon the
city because of the stench of the corpses. It is of interest that Hulegu was a
Buddhist, his favorite commander, Ked-Buka, was a Christian and so was
his senior wife, Dokuz-Khatun, a Nestorian. (Ref. 27)

After Baghdad fell, Aleppo and Damascus sent word of surrender. It was at
that time, however, that Mangku, the Supreme Khan, died of dysentery and
Hulegu withdrew his army to Azerbaijan and the Syrian campaign was
cancelled so that Islam was saved (A.D. 1259). Hulegu left for Mongolia,
leaving Ked Buka in charge and it was the latter, with the remnants of the
Mongol army that was defeated by the Mamluks at Ain Jalut, outside of
Nazareth in 1260. The Mamluks were helped by a few Christians and a few
tumen from the Golden Horde from Russia. But even with that defeat,
Hulegu's soldiers stayed in Iraq and after his death in 1265 that area was
ruled by his son, Abaka, who sent ambassadors to Europe several times to
ask for a combined Christian-Mongol attack on Baibars, the Turk of Egypt.
Finally Pope Gregory X replied that a campaign against the Moslems would
be made within three years but it didn't materialize and in the meantime the
Mongols lost control of Damascus. The last Christian garrison in Syria, at

Crak des Cheoaliers, surrendered to Baibars in 1271 and the now militant
Hospitallers moved to Cyprus and then to Rhodes. (Ref. 27, 118, 42)

After the sacking of Baghdad the entire Mesopotamian irrigation system
was abandoned, never to be rebuilt and the productivity of the land shrank
accordingly. In all fairness, however, it should be known that epicurean
indulgence, physical and mental exhaustion, military incompetence and
cowardice, religious sectarianism and obscurantism, political corruption and
anarchy had all initiated a piece-meal collapse before the external attack of
the Mongols. The raising and salination of the water table subsequent to
Over-irrigation may have done more to hasten Mesopotamia's decline than
Hulegu's visitation. (Ref. 136)

The problem of the elevation of the fields above the canal levels as a result
of centuries of silting was still another factor and this could be solved only
by vast new canal construction on a scale and with a technical complexity
which only a centralized administration could carry through. These things
and not a change of climate turned western Asia from world leadership to
destitution and from a hundred teeming and cultured cities in Syria, Iraq
and Persia into the poverty, disease and stagnation situations of modern
times — at least up to the late 20th century domination of Near East oil . In
Toynbee's classification (Ref. 220) the Mongols, who came and went all
within about 40 years, administered the coup de grace to the old Syriac
Society. Former agricultural fields now again became grazing lands, all
tending to restore a certain nomadic element in the Islamic culture. (Ref.
279)

Prior to 1295 the Mongols had favored Christianity over Islam, possibly for
political reasons in an attempt to hold this minority group. After
conversions of the Khan and his entourage to Islam, Christians were further
subjected to massacres, forced mass conversions and various indignities, so
that Christian communities in Iraq and Syria lost their importance. Only a
few mountainous refuge areas remained solidly Christian after 1300. The
Jews survived more successfully than the Christians.

After the battle of Ain Jalut, the Mamluks ruled Syria for almost 250 years.
In spite of foreign domination and the decline in general, mentioned above,
Syria still maintained some semblance of culture, with well maintained

hospitals, including some for the insane and they treated all
ophthalmological diseases with skill, including fine cataract operations.
After this 13th century, however, Syria definitely waned.

IRAN: PERSIA

Early in the century the people of the western fragment of the Shahdom of
Khwarizm were pushed into Persia by the Mongols, but shortly thereafter a
young shah rallied them and seized Azerbaijan and Georgia. This new
shahdom was short-lived as anew Mongol advance extinguished it in 1231.
The Assassins of Alamut were annihilated in 1256. Al- though some say
that 2/3rds of Iran's population was killed by the invading Mongols, still,
Persia fared better that the other countries of the Near East. After Ogedei 's
death, the Mongol Empire continued to expand in Persia through the
campaign of Baiju and Hulegu, brother of Kublai, who founded a new
Persian Il-Khan Dynasty in northwestern Persia, with a capital at Maragha.
The greatest ruler of this dynasty was Ghazan Khan, scholar and
administrator, whose reign gave great prosperity and culture. Chancellor
Raslidu'd Din Fadu'llah, perhaps of Jewish parentage, was an administrator,
scholar and physician, who established a great university city for the
development of all the arts, crafts and sciences, bringing students and
teachers from all over the world. Of the same era was Hafiz (meaning
"remember"- given the name because he had memorized the entire Koran) —
a fine poet, who was concerned with wine, women and song. Tabriz was a
glorious city of 1,000,000 people at that time. In 1295 the Khan of Persia
espoused the Moslem faith, after first flirting with Nestorian Christianity. It
was in this century that there was the first mention of a Bakhatiyari tribe
(probably Kurdish) in the Zagros mountains but it did not become a real
force in Iranian history until the 18th century, when we shall meet them
again. (Ref. 137, 175, 70, 38)

ASIA MINOR: ANATOLIA

TURKEY

Although Byzantine still dominated the immediate area of the Bosporus
Strait as the century opened, the Seljuq Turks ruled most of the other
regions know known as "Turkey". In addition to the small area about the
straits, Byzantine controlled a small area of eastern Greece, southern
Macedonia and a small area of coastal Anatolia. The latter soon went to the
Venetians, however, when while carrying the 4th Crusaders, they took all
the islands on the trade routes. The swordsmen of this 4th Crusade seized
and ravaged Constantinople itself and then when the Mongols administered
a crushing defeat on the Seljug forces at Kose-dagh in 1243, there was very
little central authority left. Then, for the first time, the Greeks had a
majority in the shrunken empire. The little Kingdom of Nicaea eliminated
the Latins from Asia about 1223 and then the Greeks teamed up with
Venice's enemy, Genoa, to drive out the remaining westermers by 1261. An
earthquake of 1268 which killed about 60,000 people in Cilicia added to the
confusion. (Ref. 137, 8, 222)

NOTE: Insert Map 52. The Byzantine Empire 1265

It was into this shattered land of Anatolia that the beginnings of a new
empire emerged. Although somewhat shrouded in legend it appears that
about 1288 or 1290 Othman (or Osman) became the ruler of a small
offshoot Turkish band from the Seljuqs from Khurasan, who had settled in a
barren part of northwest Asia Minor. Far removed from the real Seljuq
center of power, these Turks depended only on their stubborn dedication to
Muslim causes and on their military prowess for survival. Under Othman
and his son, the tribe prospered and gradually began to take territory away
from both the Seljuqs, proper, and Byzantium. They were subsequently
known either as Ottomans or Osmanlis. Additional Notes

ARMENIA

The Armenian civilization continued chiefly in Cilicia, or Little Armenia.
In 1247 the Sultan of Rum and the Christian king of Cilicia, Hayton I,
became Mongol vassals. But the Egyptian Baibars started an attack in 1275,

driving through Little Armenia and to Rum, there to defeat a Mongol army
in the mountains, thus eliminating Mongol control. (Ref. 27)

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Note:Although it was mentioned in the paragraphs on THE CHRISTIAN
CHURCH, the text fails to emphasize what might be called "the first fall of
Constantinople" in 1204 when the city was sacked by the 4th Crusaders.
The Latins of the East (Romania) replaced the Greek Empire at
Constantinople from 1204 to 1261. (Ref. 119) After 1204 waves of Italian
merchants arrived both in the city of Constantinople and on the shores of
the Black Sea. Shopkeepers and notaries followed. (Ref. 260)

The Near East: A.D. 1301 to 1400

THE NEAR EAST

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ARABIA AND JORDAN, COASTAL AREAS OF ISRAEL AND
LEBANON, & IRAQ AND SYRIA

Although McNeill (Ref. 279) describes an homogeneous, organizational
pattern and technique of trade which had been established all across the
southern seas from the south China coast to the Mediterranean, the greater
part of the Near East remained stagnant and unproductive. The decline of
the irrigation works and the shift of the trade routes from the land to the sea
had weakened the cities of Iraq and the centers of the Muslim society lay
both farther west in Egypt and farther east in Persia. (Ref. 8) On the
political side, the greatest episode of the era was Timur's conquest of
Baghdad, in which his troops killed 90,000 people and erected 120 columns
of their severed heads. (Ref. 71) More details of Timur's expeditions will
follow in subsequent sections.

At Damascus, a fine physician, Ala'al-din ibn al-Nafis, expounded a theory
of the pulmonary circulation of the blood 270 years before Servitus did-so
in Europe.

IRAN: PERSIA

One of the most striking changes in the first half of the century in the Near
East was the disappearance of the Khanate of Persia and its subject Seljuq
Sultanate of Iconium and their replacement by a variety of petty states. In
eastern Persia there were native provincial governments, while the
diminished central power remained with the Mongol dynasty of the
Jalayrids. Just north of the Persian Gulf was the Muzaffarid Emirate. (Ref.
108) Even so, the Muslim culture of the east was productive, with the art of

the miniature and a new architectural style. The Persian language, revived
in an Islamic form, was the medium of great poetry. (Ref. 8) As the century
ended the conquests and raids of Timur resulted in his complete control of
the country.

ASIA MINOR: ANATOLIA

TURKEY

The shrunken Byzantium was ruled by Michael IX and his father
Andronicus as co-emperors, as the century opened. Antagonism with the
Italians continued, so that in 1302 Andronicus hired Roger de Flor and his
6,000 Catalan mercenaries (The Catalan Company) from Barcelona,
equipped with crossbows, to fight against those Italians who were in
Constantinople. About 3,000 of the latter were killed and the Catalans then
went on a rampage of their own through the Balkans. (Ref. 119)

As in Persia, throughout Anatolia there was a breakup of the previously
ruling powers. The Seljug Sultanate of Iconium, which had ruled the entire
eastern portion of the peninsula under Persian suzerainty, gave way to a
group of petty states. The Emirate of Karamanian, bordering on the
Mediterranean corner, was at first the strongest but then all of the Byzantine
Asia was conquered by the emir of Kastamuni, the six emirates of the
southwest coast and finally the Ottoman sultanate on the northwest corner.
(Ref. 137) The Ottoman capture of Bursa in 1326 was followed by the fall
of the remaining Byzantine strongholds in the area so that by the middle of
the century Byzantium existed essentially only on the European side of the
Marmara Sea and a small portion of Greece. (Ref. 8)

NOTE: 53. The Byzantine and Ottoman Empires 1355

The Ottoman Turks continued to gain territory, crossing into Europe and
gaining mastery of the Balkans as well as dominating the Anatolian princes.
Their sultans, on assuming the throne, regularly practiced fratricide to
remove potential claims to the crown. Later this was actually allowed by

law, a practice they may have inherited from the Byzantines, themselves.
Sir Mark Sykes, in The Caliphs' Last Heritage, stated:

"The relations between the Ottoman Sultans and the Emperors has been
singular in the annals of Moslem and Christian states. The Turks had been
involved in the family and dynastic quarrels of the Imperial City, were
bound by ties of blood to the ruling families, frequently supplied troops for
the defense of Constantinople, and on occasion hired parts of its garrison to
assist them in various campaigns; the sons of the emperors and Byzantine
statesmen even accompanied the Turkish forces in the field, yet the
Ottomans never ceased to annex Imperial territories and cities both in Asia
and Thrace." [footnote]

As quoted by Wells, (Ref. 229), page 568

By the end of the century the Ottomans already had 12,000 Janissaries,
chiefly from the Balkans. (See UPPER BALKANS, this chapter). It was at
that time, too, that Timur invaded from the east and at Sivas, Turkey, he had
4,000 defenders buried alive, after a promise not to shed blood if they
surrendered. (Ref. 71)

ARMENIA

We noted in the last chapter that the Armenian civilization remained chiefly
in Cilicia, or Little Armenia, but even there it was under attack by the
Egyptian forces and by 1375 even this small area was completely
conquered and destroyed by the Mamluks. The few Armenians who were
not slaughtered scattered throughout the Near East. To add further insult, in
1386 Timur seized the original, Greater Armenia and massacred most of the
people there. (Ref. 222)

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ARABIA AND JORDAN

In this period there were some independent nomad kingdoms along the
northeastern periphery of the Arabian Peninsula on the Persian Gulf coast,
but they were not important. The western, Red Sea coast was controlled by
the Egyptian Mamluks. Coffee was first introduced as a beverage in Aden,
in this century. (Ref. 211

COASTAL AREAS OF ISRAEL AND LEBANON

The entire Mediterranean coast was controlled by the Mamluk Sultanate of
Egypt. (Ref. 9) Huge cannon, using balls of stone, helped the Turks batter
down the walls of those Christian cities which had resisted them for 100
years. Slavery was prevalent in the entire area. (Ref. 213)

IRAQ AND SYRIA

This part of the Near East was becoming a back-water. At the opening of
this century Iraq and Syria were part of the Timurid Emirate, but in 1408
Timur set up the separate Emirate of White Sheep Turks in this region and
eastern Asia Minor, to counteract the Emirate of Black Sheep Turks, who
had seized Persia. In 1410 the latter group took over the entire region,
confronting the Timurids on a line running south of the Caspian. By 1467,
however, the White Sheep group again conquered the entire area of
Mesopotamia and Persia, pressing hard on the failing Asian Timurid
Emirate of Herat. (Ref. 137)

IRAN: PERSIA

As the century began most of Persia was ruled by Shah Rukh, 4th son of
Timur, with a reign of splendor and many successful campaigns against the
Turkoman Dynasty of the Black Sheep to the northwest. The western part
of Persia fell to the Black Sheep in 1408, however, and they dominated their
rivals, the White Sheep Turks, who had been set up against them in
Anatolia by Timur. Pushed on the west by the Ottoman Sultanate the people
of the White Sheep re-grouped in 1467 and vanquished their "Black Sheep
cousins" on the eastern border, taking essentially all of Persia and
challenging the expiring Timurids in lower central Asia. (Ref. 137) Their
leader was Uzun Hasan.

ASIA MINOR: ANATOLIA

TURKEY

Early on in the century Byzantine was confined to Constantinople across
the straits, while the Ottomans held almost the entire peninsula. After their
defeat at Ankara by Timur, however, the Ottoman Empire under Bayezid I,
shrunk, as Timur simply set up several Anatolian emirs, establishing the
Emirates of Kastamuni, Karaman and the White Sheep, among other lesser
ones. (Ref. 137, 8) The sons of Bayezid I fought each other for a decade, so
the reconstruction of the Ottoman state fell to Mehemmed I (1413-21) and
his son Murad II (1421-51), culminating in the reign of Mehemmed II
(1451-81). After capturing Constantinople in 1453 the Ottomans had
established a true empire, contemporary with the Habsburg. The Turks used
improved cannons, cast on the spot, in the capture of Constantinople, but
the craftsmen who made them were Hungarian. Latin Christian gun-makers
had achieved a technical lead over all others. (Ref. 279) The Ottoman was
the last of the great universal empires of Islam, overlying the Abbasid and
Seljuk, with some Mongol influence via the IIkhanids of Persia. They saw
themselves as Ghazis — fighters for Islam against polytheists. (Ref. 8) By
the end of the century this sultanate had once again conquered almost the

entire peninsula, touching the Kingdom of Georgia on the east bank of the
Black Sea and confronting the Emirate of the White Sheep Turks on a line
running almost south from there to the Mamluk territory on the eastern
Mediterranean coast. At the same time they drove the Genoese out of the
Black Sea, occupying their trading posts in the Crimea, particularly Kaffa
(1479). (Ref. 137, 292)

The Ottoman armies were made up of three elements: Moslem cavalrymen,
who lived on their estates in winter and joined the sultan for summer
campaigns; slave families, which were actually a vast educational
establishment for the conversion of Christian boys into champions of Islam;
and finally Christian auxiliaries, many Rumanian, under their own princes.
It is interesting that some feel that the capture of Constantinople was
actually the downfall of the Ottomans, as witness this quotation from Sir
Mark Sykes|[footnote]:

As quoted by H. G. Wells (Ref. 229), page 570

"To the Turks the capture of Constantinople was a crowning mercy and yet
a fatal blow. Constantinople had been the tutor and polisher of the Turks.---
the markets died away, the culture and civilization fled, the complex finance
faded from sight and the Turks had lost their governors and their support.
On the other hand, the corruptions of Byzantine remained, the bureaucracy,
the eunuches, the palace guards, the spies, the bribers, go-betweens,---all
these the Ottomans took over and all these survived in luxuriant life. The
Turks, in taking Stambul, let slip a treasure and gained a pestilence."

ARMENIA

Armenia had no independent existence at this time but some Armenians
settled in the north of Syria around the mountains of Jabal Agra (Roman-
Mount Cassius) where some 2,000 still remain today. Others scattered to
Turkey and other adjacent lands. (Ref. 118)

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ARABIA AND JORDAN & MEDITERRANEAN COASTAL AREAS
OF ISRAEL AND LEBANON

Nominally all of this area went from Mamluk control to the Ottoman Turks
between 1516 and 1517. Even North Yemen was occupied by the Turks
from this century off and on until 1918, but they were able to exercise only
nominal sovereignty over the many tribes. (Ref. 82) Portuguese attempts to
get a monopoly on the spice trade by seizing Aden on the tip of the Arabian
Peninsula and thus prevent the Red Sea-Cairo-Alexandria trade route, were
unsuccessful. (Ref. 8)

IRAQ AND SYRIA

It was in Aleppo and Damascus that Selim I defeated the Mamluk troops
allowing the Ottoman advance on the Mediterranean coast and into Egypt,
so that all of that part of the Near East came under his control. (Ref. 8)

IRAN: PERSIA

As the century opened Persia was a mass of small kinglets, the Timurid
Empire having collapsed. By 1502, however, Shah Ismail I united the
country, founding the Shi'ite Safavid Dynasty, combining an audacity with a
religious appeal to accomplish this feat. This Shi'ite (or Shiah) variation of
Islam was not new, but never before had it been the fundamental focus for
an entire nation. It has remained the state faith of Iran up to the present
time, recognizing no rightful caliphs but Ali and his 12 lineal descendants,

and in a sense, representing a split off the orthodox Moslem Sunnites
somewhat like the split of the Protestants from the Catholic church in the
Christian world. The Persian language became the basic tongue of this new
Islamic society. The Safavid soldiers were fanatical in their religion,
bursting out of a small territory south of the Caspian Sea and beginning
their clash with the Ottoman Selim I by 1514. This pressure on the Turks'
rear may have saved Christendom from further Turkish advances, but this
violent split of the Moslem sects was one of the three most important
setbacks to the Moslems, as a whole. Other factors were the Iberian
Crusade against them and the administrative consolidation of Moscovy,
which prevented the advance of the Moslem Khanates of the western
steppe.

Safavid art in textiles, rugs and books was unparalleled, but the Long Wars
against the Turks, extending from 1518 to 1590, weakened the
administration which was only partially restored by the advent of Shah
Abbas I the Great, a man of broad outlook and strong will, although
personally exceptionally cruel. He moved the capital to Isfahan where he
built many palaces, mosques, gardens and bridges, to the delight of its
600,000 people. He had 80,000 horses in his cavalry. This shah made peace
with the Turks in 1590 in order to deal with the Uzbeks, who had been
invading along the Iranian-Central Asian border in Khorasan for many
years. Of incidental interest is the fact that about 1562 Anthony Jenkinson
of the English Moscovy Company, reached Persia overland through Russia
and opened commercial relations between East and West. (Ref. 222, 119,
260, 135)

ASIA MINOR

TURKEY

Selim I, the fanatic Sunnite Ottoman Turk leader, first slaughtered 40,000 of
his own subjects who were Shi'ites, then attacked Persia -and conquered
Mesopotamia9 along with Syria, Arabia and Egypt. By capturing the high

priest of orthodox Mohammedism, the sultans, like Henry VIII, became
masters of the church as well as the state. Under Suleiman I (1520-1566)
the Ottoman Empire reached its greatest extent and started its long decline.
With 25,000,000 people it had twice the population of any European nation
except France. The Turks were dominant in their chiefly Moslem empire,
but there were also millions of Christians, including Greeks, Serbs,
Hungarians, Bulgars, Walalchians and Moldavians. This same area today
contains 21 modern nations plus large areas of the United Soviet Socialist
Republic's Ukraine, Crimea, Caucasus, Armenia and Georgia. All of those
domains were allowed fairly independent rule, but were subject to
Constantinople and had to pay annual tribute. The Stamboulyol was a
carriage road from present day Istanbul to Belgrade via Sofia, an indication
both of the new importance of carriages and the extent of European Islam.
(Ref. 260) Suleiman, himself, was a man of gracious manners, temperate
and either he or his vizier, Ibrahim Pasha, had sufficient administrative
ability to make this reign equal to or greater than that of any ruler of his
time. In the early part of his term his direct subjects numbered perhaps only
14,000,000, while Spain had 5,000,000 and England 2,500,000. Continuing
wars on the European mainland with the Habsburgs and the wars against
Shi'ite Persia debilitated all sides, but Sulei man persisted, taking the
remainder of Hungary and actually advancing to the gates of Vienna. A
Turkish fleet took Rhodes and was active along the Italian shores, only to
be finally chased away by a Genoese fleet under Andrea Dorea. When the
Hungarian campaign ended with Ferdinand of Hungary making his country
an actual Turkish province in 1540, the Turks returned to Asia Minor and
forged on eastward to the Persian border to take Tabriz. Later local
rebellions in Hungary caused Suleiman to return there, where he died in
1566, in another siege, leaving his empire in dynastic and religious troubles.
His successor, Selim II, was a drunkard. (Ref. 8, 131)

In 1571 the Christian world rejoiced prematurely at the victory of Lepanto,
where an Ottoman fleet was defeated by ships of a new Holy League,
composed primarily of Spain and Venice. Actually it was at least a century
thereafter before any serious alteration in the political balance took place.
The entire government administration, including the post of the grand
vizier, was filled by a specially trained group of originally Christian boys
who were brought up as Moslems and were, in essence, educated slaves.

The famed infantry Janissaries were of the same origin. In 1585 the empire
supposedly had 40,000 military horses in Asia and 100,000 in Europe. This
Turkish cavalry, the Sipahis, long remained superior to anything in Europe,
proper. After 1585, however, the empire did decline due to the degeneracy
of the sultans, perhaps augmented by syphilis in the royal family and added
to by the growth of corruption and harem influence, the emergence of
governing cliques of Jews, Greeks and others and the inevitable decline of
the Janissary corps. There was rising taxation and yet a decrease in the
treasury. (Ref. 260) At its peak the Ottoman civilization had an agriculture
and science as good as their contemporaries in the west; it was the
merchants that were not as advanced. Constantinople, with a population of
approximately 700,000, got sheep from the Balkans and grain from Egypt
and the Black Sea, which had become the Ottoman's private property. Even
so, it took harsh management by the sultan's government to prevent
shortages and great famines. (Ref. 292)

The people of Asia Minor were gentle and generally kind, except in war,
when they could be brutal. They had fine personal courage and stamina.
While there was much bribery of officials, in general law and order was
well maintained. Polygamy, concubinage and homosexuality were all
common. Social life was unisexual, with the women remaining in the
harems. Popular education was neglected but there were many excellent
poets and artistic abilities were manifested in painted tiles ana rugs and the
construction of mosques. Up through this century, the oldest son of the
royal family, on inheriting the throne, would have all his brothers strangled
to remove all threats to his position. In accord with this, at the end of the
century Mehmert III strangled 19 brothers and 7 of his father's pregnant
concubines, as he assumed the throne. Toynbee (Ref. 220) feels that the
Ottomans supplied a Universal State for the Orthodox Christian Society,
which they were unable to supply for themselves. The idea is at least
unique. (Ref. 68, 140, 131)

The two major opponents of the Ottomans in the last of this 16th century
were the Austrians and the Turcoman Confederation, remnants of the
Uzbeks, in the region around Lake Van. Concerning the first, although the
Turks won initial victories, they faced disciplined, infantry gunfire with
new European equipment and in the end were defeated.

ARMENIA

Armenia did not exist, as such, at this time. Both the basic Armenian
territory and lesser Armenia in Cilicia were all under Turkish control, with
the Armenian people pretty well scattered. Along with Jews, the dispersed
Armenians became the basic merchants throughout the Middle East. They
eventually colonized-the whole of Persia, working out from their base in
Jula, a vast suburb of Isfahan, where Shah Abbas the Great had initially
confined them in this century. They were also active in Malta at this time.
(Ref. 292)

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THE ARABIAN PENINSULA, THE MEDITERRANEAN COASTAL
AREAS, & IRAQ AND SYRIA

The Turkish Ottomans continued their rule over almost all of this area.
Some Europeans came back from the East Indies to settle in Mocha and
Jiddah on the Arabian Red Sea coast, but otherwise there was little change
on the peninsula. Intermittent warfare was waged with the Safavid Dynasty
of Persia, but trade across the region continued. There was tremendous
profit in spices and war was not to interfere with that. 3,000 tons of spices
bought in the East Indies for the equivalent of $227,603 could be sold for
$1,972,920 at Aleppa, Syria. (Ref. 211)

IRAN

Rejuvenated under Shah Abbas I, the Safavid dynasty wrested Baghdad and
the Armenian border provinces away from the Turks, and there were some
periods of tranquility, with progress in the arts and crafts. Beautiful, strong
horses were plentiful and some were moved in caravans of 1,000 at a time.
They were reserved for warfare or treated as luxuries with harnesses of
silver, gold, and precious stones. Rather than use them for communication,
human runners called “chatirs” were utilized. These runners were specially
trained for the job from childhood and they were often of the road for 30 to
AO hours at a time. (Ref. 260)

The Shia fanaticism faded somewhat, at least in the court, and a lasting
peace was finally concluded with the Ottomans in 1639. When Abbas’
grandson Shah Safi came to the throne, however he began to distinguish
himself with wholesale executions. It was the beginning of “harem rule” in

Persia, initiating a period of rapid decline. The Turks re-won Baghdad and
the Cossacks raided on the Caucasus front.

The customs and dress of the ordinary Persians changed little over the
centuries. Braudel (Ref. 260) quotes Chardin, after living 10 years in Persia,
in 1686:

“T have seen Tamerlane’s costume, which is kept in the treasury of Ispahan
and it is cut exactly like the clothes worn here today, without any different
—dress in the East is not subject to fashion...”[ footnote |

As quoted by Braudel (Ref. 260), page 323, from Chardin, Voyage en Perse
et aux Indes orientales, 1686, Vol. IV, page 1

The same might be said of their cities. In spite of some degree of culture
manifested in advanced arts and crafts, the streets of Ispahan remained
without any type of paving, dirty in the summer and muddy in winter. Dead
animals, blood from butchered ones, and human excrement increased the
filth. An Italian visitor at the end of the century wrote that the humblest
house in Palermo was better than the best in Ispahan. (Ref. 260)

ASIA MINOR

TURKEY

Constantinople, with 700,000 people, was larger than any city in Europe
and needed all the Balkan sheep, Egyptian rice, beans, and corn, Black Sea
grain and wood, and Anatolian oxen, camels, and horses to support it. It
required all empire manpower as well as Russian slaves brought in to the
salve market of Besistan. (Ref. 260) The sultan himself had 5,000 servants.
After Suleiman I (in the last century) the sultans did not marry, basically to
keep official wives from meddling in the state and the sultan’s mother
became the ruler of the harem. The harem women were technically slaves
and as Moslem women could not be enslaved, all these women were
foreigners — Russians, Circassians, Venetians, Greeks, and especially
women from the Caucasus, where there were many blue-eyed beauties.

Originally the eunuchs were white and they came also chiefly from the
Caucasus, but at the beginning of this century blacks were used. Since
castration was also against Moslem law, these black boys were castrated by
Coptic Christians near Aswan as they were brought up from deeper Africa.
In theory, these eunuchs, too, were slaves, but they often gained great
power because of their proximity to the sultan. As weak, sexually depleted
sultans appeared, the Grand Vizier and the Chief of the Black Eunuchs, the
“Aga of the women” became the real power in the empire. (Ref. 131) At the
beginning of the century the new Sultan Ahmed I refused to strangle his
brothers, as had been the custom, and simply locked them up in “the cage”,
cut off from the rest of the world. Thereafter, occasionally when a sultan
died without male issue, one of the brothers would be brought out of the
cage to the throne, knowing nothing. Then the grand vizier would rule.

After signing a peace treaty with Austria in 1606, the Turks fought with
Persia and lost Azerbaijan and Georgia. There was a long war with Venice
(1645-1660) occasioned by Turkish designs on Crete and again the
Ottomans lost, perhaps because of outdated weaponry. A Portuguese ship
which was attacked by a Turkish galley in 1603 reported that it was
“covered with arrows, up to the topmast.” [footnote] All through this
century, the Ottomans competed with Venetians for the mercenary services
of Christian infantrymen of the western Balkans. (Ref. 279) Only in cavalry
did Turkey seem to have an advantage. The empire had 40,000 horses in
Asia and 100,000 in Europe, while hostile Persia had about 80,000. (Ref.
260) It is probable that the loss of Ottoman manpower and money in their
16th century military excursions, plus the effect of inflation after 1584 and
the continuing rising population with a shrinking economy, produced an
internal crisis in the early decades of this 17th century. (Ref. 8)

Quotation from Braudel (Ref. 260), page 293

With the empire near collapse, a temporary restoration of power was
promoted by the Albanian grand vizier, Muhammad Korprulu, his son
Ahmed, and his brother-in-law Kara Mustapha, covering the period from
1656 to 1683. During that interval, in response to a Hungarian appeal for
aid against the Emperor Leopold, Kara Mustapha again took an army of
over 200,000 to the walls of Vienna. When the attack finally failed due to a
coalition of Bavarians, Saxons, and Poles, led by John III Sobieski, Kara

was strangled on order of the sultan and after this the empire began again to
disintegrate, as both Buda and Belgrade fell. Kara’s fate was typical of the
tenuous power of the grand viziers in the last of the century. Between 1683
and 1701 some 12 of these came and went. (Ref. 131)

The Treaty of Carlowitz of 1699 by which most of Hungary was
surrendered to Austria marked a turning point in the European-Islamic
military balance. Other factors also aggravated the crisis in the Ottoman
state. New sea routes to the East left the great Ottoman markets stranded in
a backwater. (Ref. 68( New World silver swamped the Turkish economy,
cutting the value of the standard Ottoman coin to 50% of its former value,
precipitating uncontrollable inflation. The Janissaries, who had reached
51,647 in number in this century, were already deteriorating due to the
admission of free Moslems to their ranks in the previous century and the
carefully trained slave-militia was no more. (Ref. 131)

ARMENIA

Throughout all of the Ottoman activity the Anatolian peninsula was
honeycombed with trade routes established by Armenian merchants
working out of the original Julfa in what was formerly Armenia and from
their transplanted New Julfa out of Ispahan, peopling the monsoon ships,
commission agents with dealings in Turkey, Russia, Europe, and the Indian
Ocean. From their exile center in New Julfa, some traveled to Patna, Nepal
and even Lhasa, Tibet. In each city they could be received and assisted by
fellow Armenian merchants. Europe, too, felt the impact of these men. In
Moscow they handled raw silk from Persia, From permanent settlements
there they traveled overland to Sweden, where they met countrymen
coming up with other merchandise from Amsterdam. Poland, Germany,
England, France, and Venice were all “invaded” by these businessmen.
There was a little Armenian colony at Lwow in Poland, with its own
printing plants. The master of regular, trading caravans from Poland to the
Ottoman Empire was always an Armenian. (Ref. 292)

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ARABIA AND JORDAN

Differing in language and cultural background, the Arabs of the peninsula
began to give the Turkish Ottoman rulers troubles. In the far south Abdul
Wahhab (Muhammad ibn Abdulwahhab), a Moslem fundamentalist, called
for the re-assertion of the original Moslem truths and soon joined forces
with the emir, Muhammad ibn Saud, to conquer central Arabia as the
Wahhabi Empire, a precursor of present day Saudi Arabia. (Ref. 6) This
empire combined brigandage and pillage with preaching.

Until 1720 the English and Dutch East India Companies had to go to
Mocha, Yemen, for coffee beans, but in that year the Dutch discovered that
they could get coffee in Java and then Ceylon, while the English found it
could be grown in the West Indies. (Ref. 211)

MEDITERRANEAN COASTAL AREAS & IRAQ AND SYRIA

All these regions remained more or less docile under the Ottoman yoke.

IRAN (PERSIA)

Persia in this century was squeezed between an aggressive group of
Afghans in the east, the Turkish Ottomans in the west and the Russians in
the north. It is of interest that in spite of political diff iculties, trade
apparently continued across the involved area. A document of 1708 says
that camels carried loads of from 1,000 to 1,500 pounds between Tabriz and

Istanbul. (Ref. 260) In 1722 the Afghan Mahmud defeated a central Persian
army and made himself shah. He later went mad and instituted a reign of
terror, massacring all Persian nobles and princes and many others. Russia
and Turkey made an agreement to dismember Persia, but this plot was
foiled by Nadir Kuli, another powerful chief of the Afshar tribe of
Khorosan (part of Turkistan) by first def eating the Afghans that were in
Persia and later defeating the Turks. In the end the Russians actually helped
in this defeat of the Turks. In 1732 Abbas III, the last of the Safavid
Dynasty, became the Persian Shah while still an infant, with Nadir still
effectively in control. On the death of Abbas in 1736 Nadir became the
shah, on the condition that the Persians renounce the Shi'a heresy. As a Turk
by race, Nadir Shah was a Sunnite, but he was never able to make this
orthodoxy acceptable to the people.

Forty thousand northern Persians died in an earthquake in 1755.
Intermittent wars, rebellions and assassinations continued until the end of
the century. Aga Mohammed founded the Kajar (Qajar) Dynasty, but
probably because of his brutal, avarice nature, he was assassinated within
three years. In 1800 the British East India Company concluded a political
and commercial treaty in which the British agreed to supply arms and
money in the event of an attack by Afghanistan or France. (Ref. 222, 119)

ASIA MINOR

TURKEY

In spite of their weaknesses, or perhaps because of them, in November of
1710 the Ottoman Empire declared war on Russia, marching north from
their secondary capital of Adrianople in Serbia, to be joined at the mouth of
the Danube by Tatar cavalry, making a total of 200,000 men. (Ref. 131) In
this instance the Russians under Peter the Great were overwhelmed and the
czar had to buy his way out by the Treaty of Pruth (1711), in which Russia
again gave up Azov. But throughout this century Turkey fought on the
defensive against Persia and the Balkan groups, as well as having further

wars with Russia. Substantial defeats between 1714 and 1718 finally
stimulated the Turks to attempt to train troops in the European fashion, but
this only led to a successful mutiny by the Janissaries, in 1730. (Ref. 279)
In the end Russia gained great territorial areas around the Black Sea and in
the eastern Balkans and the Russians called Turkey the "sick man of
Europe".

The Turks were at war for 41 of the 109 years between the siege of Vienna
in 1683 and 1792, which was the end of the second Russo-Turkish war,
involving Catherine 11 and the Treaty of Jassy. (Ref. 8) They progressively
lost Hungary, the Banat (part of present Yugoslavia and Romania),
Transylvania and Bukovina (west Ukraine and northeastern Romania), as
well as the north shore of the Black Sea, including the Crimea. The real
breakdown occurred in the 1760s when, because of Russian policies in
Poland many Poles fled to Turkey, with the Russian troops right behind
them. The Turkish Porte, backed by France, declared war, which became
known as the First War of Catherine. The French involvement in the
declining Ottoman Empire was imperialism disguised as friendship and
Turkey became the first French protectorate. (Ref. 74) The Russian fleet in
that war was officered by the British, who came from the Baltic to the
Turkish coast, while the Russian infantry attacked by land. That war ended
by the Treaty of Kuchuk Kainarji, only when Russia developed internal
troubles with the revolt of Pugachev, of which we shall hear more later. But
Russia obtained the right of free navigation in Turkish waters and many
other concessions. The Second War of Catharine developed in 1787 as a
result of Turkish intrigues with the Crimean Tatars.

As their military power declined the Ottomans had to rely more on
conference and diplomacy to maintain their prestige and in this capacity the
Phanariots rose to power. That was a Greek-Christian group, who had been
living in a ghetto in a corner of Stamboul, where the Moslems had allowed
a center of Orthodox Christianity to remain under the control of the
patriarch. They became very powerful in the government and probably had
visions of establishing a new Greek-Orthodox domain through the
framework of the Ottoman Empire. Phanariot families controlled the
Patriarchate of Constantinople and extended its jurisdiction over the
formerly independent Serbian and Bulgarian churches. Istanbul had narrow,

dirty streets and houses were usually of only one story, built of wood and
bricks and were white-washed. Fire often did great damage. (Ref. 260)

ARMENIA

Although the geographical area of Armenia was still controlled by
Ottomans and the Armenian people were dispersed widely, many of the
Armenian merchants and financiers played important parts in
Constantinople and other Turkish cities. Some Armenian merchants
traveled as far as Sining on the Chinese frontier to trade silver for gold, a
very profitable operation at that time. Even Lhasa in Tibet and any number
of cities of India were common "ports of call" for these business men. (Ref.
292) From the old Armenian homeland, itself, cantaloupe was taken to
Europe. (Ref. 260)

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The first cholera epidemic of the 1820s, coming out of India, went to
Mesopotamia, Iran, Syria, Asia Minor and the Caspian shores. It was
stopped only by a very severe winter in 1824. The next epidemic of the
same disease occurred in the 1,830s and was established at Mecca by 1831.
Thereafter epidemics of cholera always followed the Moslem pilgrimages
to Mecca until 1912. There were approximately 40 such epidemics in the
Near East. (Ref. 140)

ARABIA AND JORDAN

Nationalist opposition to Turkish rule was aroused by a revival of the
Wahabi movement, which was a reform within Islam. Its cause was
strengthened by the adherence of the founder of the present ruling f amily
of Saudi Arabia, into whose hands much of Arabia fell. Expansion of this
Saudi kingdom was temporarily halted by the Ottoman Empire, but just
after the turn of the new century in 1,902, Abdulaziz captured Rijadh and
reinstated the al Sauds to leadership, paving the way to unification.

Hejaz on the eastern shore of the Red Sea had Egyptian occupation from
1,811 to 1,840, then local rulers, the sharifs of Mecca, under Ottoman
sovereignty until the next century. Bahrain, in the Persian Gulf, remained an
independent sheikdom under the Al Khalifa family, but had British
protection after 1,820. Aden, at the southwest tip of the peninsula, was
annexed by British from India for use as a coaling station in 1,83~ and
following this British influence in the area gradually increased. Kuwait, at
the head of the Persian Gulf, was an autonomous sheikdom under the al
Sabah family, with the Ottomans still claiming sovereignty until the British
took it under formal protection after 1,899. Jordan remained passively
under Turkish rule. (Ref. 6, 8)

MEDITERRANEAN COASTAL AREAS

A new colonization of the Palestine area from Europe began about 1,870.
Although Lebanon was under Ottoman control, this area was permitted
autonomy and powerful families rose periodically to rule. In one particular
mountainous area lived the Druses, an off-brand Islamic sect who were
fierce fighters and haters of Christians. In 1,841 and again in 1,860 they
came down out of the mountains to massacre the Christian Maronites.
Pressure from European powers had forced the Ottomans to grant still
greater independence to "Great Lebanon", as it was then called. An
American university was established in Beirut in 1,866. Printing had not
attained significance in the Near East until this century, but now western
books began to be translated into Turkish, Arabic and Persian.

IRAQ AND SYRIA

These two areas remained mainstays of the Ottoman Empire. Ibrahim
Pasha, from Egypt, seized Syria from the Turks in 1,832 and 1,833, but later
had to withdraw under European pressure. Some of the Druses also lived in
Syria and although the massacres were in Lebanon they threw all Syria into
an uproar.

IRAN: PERSIA

In Iran the Kajars (Qajars) continued as rulers throughout the century
initiating a disastrous foreign and military policy, so that inroads were
constantly made by western powers. Between 1,804 and 1,827 Russia
defeated Iran in three wars, annexing Georgia and Azerbaijan. Iran's part of
Afghanistan was also lost with the Treaty of Turkamanchai in 1,828 as
Russia took over the entire foreign trade control and gradually thereafter
gained control of the northern districts of Iran. The wild horsemen of Iran
and Turkistan were no longer a match for armies equipped by European or
even Chinese weapons. The British even fought a short Persian war in
1,856, but the Kajar Dynasty was not seriously challenged on that occasion.

Of political impact in this century were the three tribes of the Bakhtiyarl
living in the central Zagros mountains and the adjacent northeast Khuzistan
plain, in an area of approximately 20,000 square miles. This was and is a
highly organized group, with leaders arranged in pyramidal f ashion
through the khans and finally at the top, the Ilkhani. Nasir al-Din Shah of
the central Persian government conferred the title of I[khani by imperial
decree. The holder of that title benef ited greatly in wealth and prestige and
in return saw that his people paid taxes and homage to the central
government. But at the end of the century there was considerable
squabbling and interchange of the position of IIkhani between two families
of the Bakhtiyarl. Finally it was agreedj with support of Nasir al-Din Shah
and the British that both families should be honored, one with the Ilkhani
and one with an assistant Ilkhani to be called the "ilbigi". After the turn of
the century, in the Persian revolution, the Bakhtiyarl used force against the
shah, himself, although they still also quarreled among
themselves[footnote] (Ref. 70, 132)

Much later in the 20th century, Mohammed Riza Shah's 2nd wife was a
Bakhtiyari princess. (Ref. 70)

ASIA MINOR

TURKEY

The Turkish Empire was kept alive artificially during this century by Great
Britain, France, Germany and Hungary as a bulwark against Russian
advances to the straits. A series of weak sultans were kept on the throne, the
last being Abdul Hamid II (1,876- 1,909). Russia gained more Turkish
territory between 1,806 and 1,812. In 1,818 the Turks had to put down
temporarily the Wahabi Empire in Arabia by an expedition from, and with
the help of, Egypt and then fight a similar revolt in Syria. Greece declared
its independence in 1,821 and won it; the Phanariots were overthrown and
the Turks doubted the loyalty of all Greeks, thereafter. The Janissaries were
abolished in 1,826 because they were beginning to control even the viziers
and the sultans. Nicholas I of Russia gained Georgia and the principal

mouth of the Danube in still another Turkish war, terminated in 1,829 by
the Treaty of Adrianople. Related to this, at a second conference in London,
Greece was formally given its independence. Reforms in government were
initiated by Mahmud II and in 1,839 even Christians and Jews were granted
formal equality with Muslims.

The Crimean War (1,854-56) was still another one fought by Turkey against
Russia, but that time Turkey had western allies and Russia lost. Even so, in
the Battle of Sinope in the Black Sea, new types of shells fired by the
Russians completely destroyed the wooden fleet of the Turks, bringing two
results - the realization by western powers that new armor was needed for
warships and the bringing of Britain into the war to protect Constantinople.
(Ref. 279) The campaign was a tragic one for the British, who lost ten times
as many soldiers from dysentery as from Russian arms. It also showed up
the deficiencies of traditional methods of supply, leading to a modernization
of methods of management of armed forces. The Russians could not supply
their forces adequately overland across the steppe, even though they had the
largest land army in Europe. (Ref. 279) The Russians came back again in
1,877-78 in the Russo-Turkish War and this time the Turks were about to
lose their entire empire. Actually the sultan had never really recovered from
the Crimean War, because of the large public debt owed the Europeans for
railroad construction, etc., and the formal guarantees of liberties forced by
those allies. After that second war, the western allies met at the Congress of
Berlin and forced Russia to give up much of its gains, but even then Turkey
was left with only a portion of its former territory on the European side of
the straits and much of that was still disputed by Russia. The bankruptcy of
Turkey focused the need for revision of archaic and decadent institutions
and led eventually to the revolution of the Young Turks in 1,908.

In this century Akif Pasha reformulated the Turkish language, developing a
simpler vocabulary and style for Turkish prose and since then literary
Turkish has been based on this work. (Ref. 131, 140, 8)

ARMENIA

Most of Armenia was still included as part of the Turkish Empire, but
eastern Armenia, as we have seen, had been constantly disputed between
Turkey and Persia for centuries. In 1,828 Russia acquired the region of
present day Armenian Soviet Socialist Republic, from Persia. After the year
1,894, in the remainder of old Armenia, the Turk Abdul-Hamid II started a
systematic plan for the extermination of the Armenian people.

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Geographical Presentation of The Pacific

The Pacific Ocean makes up one-half of the globe on which we live and if
we exclude Australia, the total amount of land existing as islands in this
massive amount of water is almost infinitesimal. Yet many of these tiny
islands are of great interest because of the continuing controversies about
the origin of their people and method of settlement. It has been impossible
to show the entire Pacific on a diagrammatic map on the scale we have
selected, so the large map on the second page ahead shows only essentially
the south Pacific and omits the far eastern and western expanses, even then.
The chief components of this geographical area will be outlined below.

AUSTRALIA AND THE PACIFIC ISLANDS

Because of the lack of space on the next page map, an additional, same
scale drawing of Australia is shown below. After one records what little is
known about the pre-history of this continent, as will be noted in the text,
no more information is available until the 16th century C.E. when
Europeans first visited the land.

The islands of the Pacific are usually divided into three groups. In the
western side of the ocean, but north of the equator are the various groups of
tiny islands, chiefly of coral origin, which are known collectively as
Micronesia. Wake Island, the Marianas and the Caroline are examples of
this group. Still in the western Pacific but south of the equator is
Melanesia, so called because of the dark skins and Negroid features of the
inhabitants. The Solomons, Hebrides and New Caledonia are examples of
these basically volcanic islands. Finally, in the eastern half of the Pacific
there is the so-called Polynesian triangle with the Hawaiian Islands at the
apex, New Zealand in the southwest corner and Easter Island at the
southeast point. One must realize that, excluding New Zealand, making any
dot visible to the naked eye on any large scale map, makes the land far out
of proportion. In correct perspective, they should be only microscopic
points.

[missing resource: fixMe.jpg]

Australia

[missing_resource: fixMe.jpg]

The Pacific

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The Pacific: Beginning to 8000 B.C.

THE PACIFIC

It is possible that between 50,000 and 70,000 years ago man ventured onto
the continent of Australia and settled chiefly along the coastal areas which
are now submerged and not accessible to excavation. At that time there
were land bridges from New Guinea to Australia and on to Tasmania.
Others believe that Australia was colonized only some 30,000 years ago
with the men coming by boat or raft. Trager (Ref. 222) says that these first
sea-going people of the world populated Australia at 42,000 B.C. In any
event, edge-ground axes dating to 22,000 years ago have been found in
Arnheim Land on the north coast, and it is thought that the entire continent,
along with Tasmania and New Guinea were probably widely settled by
18,000 B.C. The people were early hunters contemporary with giant
marsupials which they may have helped to exterminate. The land bridges
probably continued out into Melanesia and the same people soon occupied
those continental extensions into the south Pacific. We have no information
about humans in the other far-spaced islands of the Pacific at that very early

Note:Rock art appeared in South Australia before 20,000 B.C. and human
bones have been found in caves in Tasmania of 20,000 years ago, thus two
times older than any others found this far south. (Ref. 299, 312)

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The Pacific: 8000 to 5000 B.C.

THE PACIFIC
Back to The Pacific: Beginning to 8000 B.C.

Australia had many of the same tools that were found in New Guinea, such
as the edge-ground axe and waisted blades. Micronesia and most of
Polynesia appear to have been uninhabited throughout all these millennia
under review.

Forward to The Pacific: 5000 to 3000 B.C.
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The Pacific: 5000 to 3000 B.C.

THE PACIFIC
Back to The Pacific: 8000 to 5000 B.C.

About 4,000 B.C. seas rose to their present level and the dingo was
introduced to Australia perhaps by boat. The Australian small tool tradition,
in archaeological terms, appeared on that continent. Mankind was in the
Soloman Islands in Melanesia by about 3,000 B.C. (Ref. 8) Additional
Notes

Note:The arguments go on about the origin and route of settlement of the
Polynesian islands. Sinoto (Ref. 300) has recently excavated an ancient
sailing canoe on Huahine in the Society Islands group, and reports that this
dates to 3000 B.C. His conclusion that this indicates that ancient mariners
sailed from Asia to these islands is difficult to verify from his paper. He
says that linguists are able to trace language roots of early Polynesian
sailors back to a tongue spoken in Southeast Asia 5,000 years ago and that
this is strongly supported by archaeological evidence of west to east
movement. The actual "evidence" is not detailed. There is little doubt but
what the Polynesian ancestors came from Southeast Asia, but their route to
the eastern Pacific and the time schedule is still debatable. There is more
about this argument in the main outline in the 4th century C.E. and after.

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7. The Indian Subcontinent
8. The Near East

The Pacific: 3000 to 1500 B.C.

THE PACIFIC
Back to The Pacific: 5000 to 3000 B.C.

Aboriginal development in religion, political and economic life continued
in Australia. Immigrants from Indonesia brought Lapita pottery into the
Melanesian islands by 2,000 B.C. and perhaps to Micronesia, just north of
the equator, by about 1,500 B.C. (Ref. 8, 134)

Forward to The Pacific: 1500 to 1000 B.C.
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The Pacific: 1500 to 1000 B.C.

THE PACIFIC
Back to The Pacific: 3000 to 1500 B.C.

New Caledonia is said to have had human habitation 3,000 years ago and it
is known that Lapita pottery people reached Fiji in Melanesia by 1,300 B.C.
Later they reached Tonga and Samoa on the western edge of Polynesia (see
6th century B.C. discussion of this point). The aborigines of Australia
continued unmolested at this time. (Ref. 8, 176)

Forward to The Pacific: 1000 to 700 B.C.
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The Pacific: 1000 to 700 B.C.

THE PACIFIC
Back to The Pacific: 1500 to 1000 B.C.

As mentioned in the last chapter, Fell (Ref. 65) writes that western Pacific
languages were greatly influenced by Libyan sailors as they helped the
Egyptians mine gold in Sumatra. Fell actually used the term "Polynesian"
when he probably should have used "Melanesian" or "Micronesian" where
Neolithic cultures were known to have flourished at that time. Furthermore,
it must be noted that this whole idea lacks confirmation by any other source
material available to the author. While we are on controversial ground, it
seems appropriate to introduce the theories of Thor Heyerdahl concerning
the entire Pacific region. Heyerdahl is a bona fide professor of anthropology
and biology with his own museum at Oslo, with some following on the
continent, but whose work has not been whole-heartedly accepted in the
United States. Whether this is the result of the frequent suspicion of
conservative professionals in any field for those of their numbers who write
for public consumption and profit, or not, remains to be determined. The
facts remain that he has done several years research in the southern Pacific
and presents an enormous amount of material that would be difficult to
refute. We therefore present his ideas for serious consideration.

We must start with the realization that the Pacific Ocean covers one-half of
the earth's surface and is, itself, a hemi-globe with only infinitesimal
amounts of land scattered at great distances as islands across its vast
expanse. If New Zealand is excluded, the combined surface areas of the
Pacific islands would not cover an area half as large as New York State.
Micronesia is that group of coral atolls barely rising above the ocean
surface and in total surface area less than that of Long Island and which is
located east of Asia and north of the equator but in an ocean area equating
the total width of the Atlantic. South of Micronesia and the equator is
Papua-Melanesia, a similarly wide water area beginning where the
Indonesian archipelago ends and stretching 4,000 miles from western New
Guinea to eastern Fiji. These are large, high islands of continental type,
forming almost an uninterrupted bridge eastward, leaving only Fiji as an

oceanic group distinct from the rest. East of both Micronesia and
Melanesia, running both above and below the equator, lies Polynesia, a
group of islands and atolls lying in a triangle with Hawaii at the north, New
Zealand in the south and Easter Island in the east.

The settling of Papua-Melanesia by Stone Age people, travelling almost by
foot over land bridges in prehistoric times (See ‘The Pacific: Beginning to
8000 B.C.) has never been disputed. Except perhaps for Fiji, no
navigational problems were encountered. The problem of the settlement of
Micronesia is more complicated, although most scholars are agreed that the
tribes there represent a mixture of unidentified people with later intruders
from both Melanesian and Polynesian areas. Winds and ocean currents
would favor overseas drifts from both of these areas.

The settling of Polynesia is still under controversy. The classical concept,
still propounded in most histories, is that the Polynesian islands were
uninhabited until fairly recent times (i.e. A.D. 600 to 1,000) when the
people spread by outrigger canoes from Melanesia and Southeast Asia. But
Heyerdahl and others have quite convincingly demonstrated two fallacies in
this concept. First of all, there is now archeological evidence that the
Polynesian islands were occupied long before the true Polynesians (as we
known them today) ever appeared, and secondly it can be shown that it was
impossible to sail or canoe eastward from Asia in the southern Pacific to the
eastern Pacific until the time of very modern sailing ships. Even the great
Spanish vessels of Mendana and others in the 16th century of the Christian
Era could not sail directly east from Melanesia and Micronesia, because of
the very strong westward currents. After arriving in the west Pacific they
always re- turned home to Europe by going on west across the Indian Ocean
and around the southern tip of Africa. The only possible sea route from
Indonesia to America by primitive craft was north up along Japan on the
Urdaneta Route to between the Aleutian islands and Hawaii to the coast of
North America. All of Polynesia can be easily reached, on the other hand,
from America, even by primitive rafts. This latter fact has been
demonstrated by Heyerdahl with his Kon Tiki raft trip from Ecuador
westward across the Pacific. The essence of Heyerdahl's theories is that the
original people of the eastern Pacific islands came from the ancient
civilizations of Ecuador, Peru and perhaps Mexico and were not the people

we think of today as Polynesians. The latter came much later. The situation
is best exemplified by studies of the people, archeology and history of
Easter Island. An old tradition of that island insists that the island's earliest
ancestors came from a vast desert land to the east and that the sailing time
from the original home-land was sixty days. Some of the early people
allegedly were of white skin and of these some had red hair, while others
were dark-skinned with dark hair. Both of these types were described by
early European visitors to the island, such as the Dutch Roggeveen, in 1722.
We cannot here detail all the data which has been presented as evidence, but
Heyerdahl is quite convincing in his theory that Easter Island and others of
the Polynesian group were early populated by pre-Inca sailors from South
America, particularly from the Tiahuanaco civilization which would have
been the closest to Easter Island. It must be emphasized, however, that to
make this assumption reasonable, one must also accept the idea that the
Tiahuanaco civilization (and others in early America) might have been
instigated by Mediterranean voyagers. Early grave and mummy studies in
the Tiahuanaco area of the 19th century C.E. have confirmed that some
were definitely different from typical Amerindians. Particularly it has been
noted that the hair was not that of Amerindians, but fine in texture. In pre-
Inca times, Peru probably had a mixed population and from there such a
mixed group could easily have reached Polynesia in one or more migration
waves.

This entire concept is strengthened by the writings of the eminent French
archeologist, Frederic Andre Engel, who has worked for over twenty years
in Peru and who says that the Galapagos group and Easter Island must have
played a part in early South American history since pre-Columbian pottery
has been found on the Galapagos and it is not difficult to compare the great
statues of certain South American states and those of Easter Island and the
polyhedral walls of Cuzco, Peru and those of the Marquesas islands of
Polynesia. Others also write that permanent settlements were made between
1,000 and 500 B.C. in Polynesia, from whatever source. (Ref. 95, 62, 134)

Forward to The Pacific: 700 to 601 B.C.
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The Pacific: 700 to 601 B.C.

THE PACIFIC
Back to The Pacific: 1000 to 700 B.C.

Advanced Neolithic cultures existed throughout many of the Pacific islands.
In Australia, the aborigines developed complex kin relationships and a
religion involving time-consuming, elaborate rituals. Stone and wooden
tablets containing symbols were kept in sacred places which women or
uninitiated boys were forbidden to even approach. Some fine painting was
done on rocks and bark. (Ref. 19)

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The Pacific: 600 to 501 B.C.

THE PACIFIC
Back to The Pacific: 700 to 601 B.C.

Most classical histories record that this and adjacent centuries saw
continued spread of people from Indonesia through Melanesia and
Micronesia eastward into Polynesia but as we have indicated in previous
chapters this was probably impossible with the sea technology available at
that time because of the strong westward ocean currents. Of interest in this
regard is Braudel's (Ref. 260, page 201) statement that even in 1696 a
galleon's trip from Manila to Acapulco took six or seven months and
resulted in extreme difficulties in the feeding of the crew. Again, we should
reiterate that the Polynesians are not genetically related to either
Melanesians or Micronesians and their cultural habits and physical
characteristics are entirely different. In contrast, it has been found that the
Indians of the northwest American coast and coastal islands at the eastern
end of the Japan current across the far northern Pacific used the same adzes
that were used centuries before in the northern Philippines. Captain Cook
found these also in Tahiti and other Polynesian islands, while others of the
19th century found that the adz-handle and the method of securing the blade
to the wooden handle were exactly the same among the Polynesians as
among the northwest American Indians. 20th century anthropologists have
confirmed these observations and added many other similarities. The
inference regarding the origin of the Polynesians is clear. The only contact
that the true Polynesians had with the Micronesians was through the Fiji
Islands on the border of the two groups of islands where it seems that the
pig and the chicken spread from west to east, in a limited area. One must
realize, however, that these true, present day Polynesians did not spread
down the east Pacific from the North American coastal islands until a much
later period than this 6th century B.C. and in the meantime other peoples
did inhabit at least many of these islands. The source of these aborigines
remains somewhat uncertain, although, as detailed elsewhere in this
manuscript, it is possible that they came from Central and/or South
America. (Ref. 95)

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The Pacific: 500 to 401 B.C.

THE PACIFIC
Back to The Pacific: 600 to 501 B.C.

Please see the immediately preceding modules. No new information seems
to be available concerning this particular century.

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The Pacific: 400 to 301 B.C.

THE PACIFIC
Back to The Pacific: 500 to 401 B.C.

Australia continued to be isolated and unknown to the rest of the world.
May (Ref. 134) states that Tonga was probably settled by 400 B.C. and it
claims to have the world's oldest monarchy, although no further
documentation is offered. Although accurate dating information is lacking,
we might mention at this time that three islands of the Caroline group of
Micronesia - Yap, Lele and Ponape (formerly Ascension Island) - all have
prehistoric stone work. Ponape is one of the two volcanic islands in this
group and has the ruins of an ancient stone city and dike works. Because of
the 250 inches of yearly rainfall archaeological investigation on the island
has been difficult. The original people of Micronesia may well have come
from the Philippines. (Ref. 134)

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The Pacific: 300 to 201 B.C.

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We now come to a most interesting new concept concerning the early
inhabitants of the Pacific, based on Fell's interpretation of the cave
inscriptions of New Guinea mentioned just above. These inscriptions
include star maps, navigation diagrams and even calculations attributed to
Eratosthenes. Furthermore, in far flung Polynesian islands there are legends
of a great sailor named Maui, who "fished up new lands from the sea".
Heyerdahl, although making no mention of Fell's work, has attempted to
show, and quite convincingly, that no direct eastward sailing from Indonesia
and Melanesia was possible, but that people could reach the eastern Pacific
islands by sailing up the Japanese current to or near the coast of North
America and then back into the eastern Pacific via currents and winds that
still prevail. Perhaps, then, both Fell's and Heyerdahl's theories are
compatible in some degree. Fell claims to have found in southwestern
North America Maui's charts of the Hawaiian Islands showing Gawi (Kaui),
Uwahu (Oahu), Mawi Zara (Maui) and what he called the "Great Volcanic
Island" (Hawaii). The relative positions of these islands are the same as
those given on William Bligh's map of 1779, except that the relatively large
size of Hawaii was not recognized by Maui, indicating that he probably
only sighted it from a distance and did not really explore it. On Maui's chart
the entire island group is called hawa and the islands are placed in correct
relationship to the western coast of North America on some additional
larger maps showing the entire continent.

Professor Raymond A. Dar, distinguished South African anthropologist,
and a group from the University of Alabama led by Professor Albert E.
Casey, have given some support to Fell's hypothesis in that they have found
skull measurements of the ancient people of New Zealand (i.e. before the
advent of true Polynesians) indicate links with both North Africans,
Iberians and Zuni Arizona Indians, as well as some tribes in New England
and Northeastern Canada. The inhabitants of New Zealand prior to the
arrival of the Polynesians in a much later century, were the Morioris and

they were driven to the Chatham Islands when the Maori arrived. These
Chatham Islanders had Arabic-Semitic countenances, of ten with large,
hooked noses and reddish hair. This information from Heyerdahl is
certainly compatible with Fell's Libyan origin concept. Another hypothesis
dealing with the possible American origin of the aborigines of the eastern
Pacific islands will be given in the next chapter. (Ref. 66, 95)

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The Pacific: 200 to 101 B.C.

THE PACIFIC
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We have intimated previously that Polynesia appears to have been inhabited
by some people prior to the true Polynesian migrations of later centuries.
Whether these aboriginal dwellers came entirely from prehistoric America
or from some other clime is not known with certainty. We are quite certain
that Easter Island and perhaps adjacent South Pacific islands, such as the
Marquesas, had immigrants from South America, but what about Hawaii?
Recently on an helicopter trip to a remote, presently uninhabited part of
Kuaui, the most northern of the chief Hawaiian Islands, we landed in what
the pilot called the Valley of the Lost Tribe and he described an old
Hawaiian legend that had this as the location of the last stand of the
aboriginal people against the invading Polynesians. There were remnants of
previous terracing in this valley. Whether these originals had come from the
Americas or represented Libyans and others coming via the Japanese
Current from Indonesia, a possibility suggested by the findings of Fell (See
The Pacific: 300 to 201 B.C.), is not known. The later, true Polynesians did
not have pottery, but many ancient sherds have been found on Hawaii,
apparently left from an earlier people. Heyerdahl's arguments in favor of
original settlement from South America, particularly Peru, are impressive.
Of first importance is the flora. In Hawaii the husk tomato, Physalis
peruviania, called "poha", is an American crop plant native from Mexico to
Peru. Cotton, the sweet potato and Hibiscus of Hawaii all point to Peru. The
white flowering Hawaiian Argemone is closely related to the Argemone
grown in ancient Peru for narcotic and anesthetic properties and was
similarly used in Hawaii. We must remember that humans brought almost
all the plants to the volcanic and coral Pacific islands, as they were "born"
completely bare and only a limited number of plants such as the screw pine,
sandalwoods and possibly lauans and breadfruit could have arrived by sea
or birds before the advent of man. (Ref. 95, 134) The question of how the
sweet potato got to Hawaii and the Marquesas has been debated for a long
time. It was once alleged to have been taken there by shipwrecked Spanish
crews in 1528, but Dahlgreen of Sweden, after long study, says that there is

absolutely no evidence that Hawaii was ever visited by the Spanish prior to
Captain Cook's visitations in the 19th century. Some iron implements found
by Cook on the islands are thought to be the result of driftage from Japan.
The sweet potato is native to both South and Central America and old
Hawaiian legends are suggestive of sea contact with America. Legends of
the islands also relate that the sweet potato was dried and used for food on
long voyages, apparently to other Pacific islands (the Marquesas?). (Ref.
207) There is also a remarkable similarity between the Hawaiian flat-iron
type of grinder for poi and the Central American and Mexican corn
grinders.

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The Pacific: 100 B.C. to 0

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True Polynesians probably colonized the Hawaiin Islands less than 2,000
years ago but possibly in this first century before Christ. Similarly the
Marquesas and Society Islands were possibly reached near the beginning of
the Christian era but in the absence of more precise dating we shall
postpone further discussion of this debatable issue until the 4th century. As
indicated in previous chapters these islands were already inhabited either by
an earlier wave across the northern Pacific from the New Guinea region or
from America. Potsherds have been excavated in the Marquesas group and
on islands near Fiji and they are of a South American not a Melanesian
type. The cotton plant (the hybrid 26 chromosome type) from Mexico and
Peru spread from the Galapagos Islands to Fiji but no farther.

Shards of pottery have been found on the Galapagos off the South
American coast dating to 2,000 years ago, but whether this means a
permanent settlement or merely that some ships had taken temporary refuge
there is unknown. (Ref. 176, 95)

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The Pacific: 0 to A.D. 100

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Aboriginal peoples lived on most of the islands of the Pacific at this time,
with Melanesia long populated from the Indonesian chain and Micronesia
perhaps having received people from the Philippines. The eastern Pacific
islands were occupied by either Mexican and South Americans or possibly
by Libyan mariners, or both. The migration of true Polynesians to Hawaii
will be discussed in the 4th century C.E.

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The Pacific: A.D. 101 to 200

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The known time-frames for changes in the Pacific are so indefinite that we
cannot make a century-by-century account in this large area of the world.
Please see adjacent centuries.

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The Pacific: A.D. 201 to 300

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Please see the several preceding and the following centuries.

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The Pacific: A.D. 301 to 400

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Classical histories relate that while Lapita pottery was disappearing in
Melanesia, prehistoric Samoans ventured eastward in canoes to settle the
Marquesas and from this point, in the next 450 years, the Polynesians took
their plants, animals, adzes, fishing gear and ornaments all over the
Polynesian world. This traditional view is probably no longer tenable.
Except for root vestiges in about 1% of the total vocabulary there are no
traces of Polynesian language ties to any region in the west Pacific and by
blood typing studies it is apparent that the true Polynesians are related to the
aboriginal peoples of America, not to the Melanesians. (Ref. 45) We have
chosen this module to discuss the probable migration of the Northwest
American Kwakiutl - Haida - Salish people to Hawaii, although the time-
frame has not been definitely established and it might have occurred
anytime in the early Christian era up to the classical date of A.D. 750,
which has been accepted by many for the time of the settlement of Hawaii.
As stated on pages 269 and 270, the Canadian coastal Indians and the
Polynesians all seem identical physically, and neither of these groups have
any relationship to the inhabitants of present day Southeast Asia and/or
Indonesia. Genetically blood group B has a maximum occurrence in
Indonesia, Melanesia and Micronesia but it is totally absent among pure-
blooded Polynesians and North American Indians. The blood sub-groups of
the Polynesians also follow those of the aboriginal Americans. These
studies have been repeated by several investigators and confirmed by an
international work group in 1972.

Superficially the guttural present day languages of the Northwest Indians do
not resemble the softer speech of Polynesia, but some linguists have
confirmed a relationship of the latter with the Haida language of the central
northwest Canadian coast. The houses, mats, fish-hooks, stone adzes, poi
pounders, warclubs and in some instances the totem poles are identical,
within narrow variations, in the two groups. The legends of these people
give further clues. A legendary hero from whose brother the chiefs of the

Kwakiutl got their divine descent was called "Kan-e-a-ke-luh"[ footnote].
Similar pronunciations are used by adjacent tribes, always with the
beginning "Kan-e". The legend continues with the story of Kaneakeluh
marrying a "woman of the sea" and the two disappearing, leaving the sun to
represent them. Tribal memories of Hawaii describe the discovery of their
islands by a wandering chief who came from a vast island or mainland in
the north called the "lost home of Kane". Kane was the chief Hawaiian god
and considered the direct ancestor of the ruling families. While the
Kwakiutl claimed descent from the younger brother of Kane. It is felt that
the newly arriving Polynesians on Hawaii tended to absorb the belief s and
customs of the former inhabitants, rather than exterminating them and that
the mixture of the races began at that time. (Ref. 95) Additional Notes
Phonetical spelling, as given by Heyerdahl, (Ref. 95), page 177, quoting
G.M. Dawson, who lived among these people in the 1880s.

It has been estimated that in this century stone-masons were at work
making giant statutes in the mid-south Pacific on Easter Island. Thor
Heyerdahl believe that there is archeological and ethnological evidence that
these people had migrated by rafts from a pre-Incan civilization in Peru. We
hasten to say that only a few others accept any of this theory, although
blood factors in South America and on Easter Island suggest that the people
on the island resemble the Americans more than either of these groups
resemble Asian Mongoloids and that they have probably received genes
from both the East and the West.

Recent archeological excavations and carbon-dating on that island by
Heyerdahl and his associates have established three cultural periods with
the first, or Early Period, dating from before A.D. 380 to about A.D. 1100.
By island tradition the people of this period arrived from the east under
King Hotu Matua, after a sixty-day journey on the sea. These "long-ears"
people had raised moai or statues and made their homes from stone,
although wood was plentiful on the island at that time. They also built
totora reed boats identical with those of inland Tiahuanaco waterways and
the desert coast region of Peru. What happened to this early culture by
about 1100 is unknown, but the subsequent history of this island will be
taken up again, then, in a later module.

Note:Sinoto (Ref. 300) says that most authorities deny these theories of
Thor Heyerdahl's, which have been put forward in the text. He insists that
Polynesia was settled from the west, but he does not seem to consider the
possible Japanese current - Canadian Islands - Hawaii at all, and he does
not mention anything about blood types, which would seem to prove that
the Polynesians did not come through the western Pacific islands. Sinoto
gives the route at a much earlier period east from Tonga to Samoa to the
Marquesas and shortly thereafter to the Society Islands. As late as
November, 1983, the National Geographic Society apparently still
subscribes to the idea that the Hawaiian Islands were settled by travelers in
double canoes going 2,000 miles northeast from the Marquesas. (Ref. 309)

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The Pacific: A.D. 401 to 500

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We re-state here that in the absence of definite time markers for the Pacific
we Shall not attempt century by century documentation. Please see
preceding centuries. The classical legend of the discovery of the Hawaiian
Islands in this century by a Polynesian chieftain, Hawaii Loa, after sailing
2,400 miles from an island near Tahiti, as mentioned by Trager (Ref. 222) is
no longer tenable in the light of recent discoveries.

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The Pacific: A.D. 501 to 600

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Once again the reader is referred to previous modules, particularly the 1st
and 4th centuries of the Christian Era. It is assumed that in the first
Christian millennium there was a gradual increase in the Polynesian tribes
and a continued island to island migration via double canoes, so that the
more southern islands of the Marquesas, Samoa, Tahiti, etc., were reached
by Hawaiian travelers sometime in this period. The large canoes are still
used by Indians, Aleuts and others along the Canadian coastal waters,
although currently they may add as many as three masts and sails toa
thirty-five foot kayak. (Ref. 56)

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The Pacific: A.D. 601 to 700

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Easter Island craftsmen began building altars well before 690 and there is
some evidence that prototypic, naturalistic statues may have been placed on
them at that time. Although true Polynesians may well have been in Hawaii
and possibly the Marquesas in this century, they had not yet migrated as far
south as Easter Island and New Zealand. (Ref. 176)

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The Pacific: A.D. 701 to 800

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At this time and in adjacent centuries, the Pacific Ocean witnessed one of
the most remarkable human dispersals of all history. Remote coral atolls
and isolated volcanic cones, often separated by hundred of miles of open
sea, became sites of human habitation. This occurred by virtue of the
Polynesian sea voyages over long distances with their efficient outrigger
canoes. Most of the migrations appear to have taken place between A.D.
600 and 1,000. We have previously noted that the spread now appears to
have taken place from Hawaii southward, rather than the reverse. Even
McNeill (Ref. 139) notes that occasional accidental contact with the
Americas and the Asian mainland occurred. The erratic and complex
distribution of cultivated plants and domestic animals among the Pacific
Islands indicates the range and variety of contacts long before the
Europeans arrived in the area. Legend has it that exploring Polynesians
even reached the Antarctic ice pack in A.D. 750. Even so, throughout all
this period, there was little or no change in Australia, with the aboriginal
people existing apparently without significant change, century after century.
(Ref. 139, 76)

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The Pacific: A.D. 801 to 900

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The groups of islands called the Southern Cooks and New Zealand were
occupied by Polynesians between 750 and 850. In New Zealand the new
arrivals had either lost their Marquesan fauna and flora or those could not
withstand the new climate, as only the dog and the native rat survived. Taro,
yam and sweet potatoes grew on the northern coastal areas only.

There is little doubt but what all the Pacific island groups were already
inhabited when the Polynesians arrived. Early European voyagers were
emphatic in stating that they had seen three, clearly distinct people,
intermixed. The dominant type had fair to light, copper-colored skin, black
hair, almost European features with a slight Mongoloid stamp, ability to
grow mustaches and tall stature, usually six feet in height. This is the
common norm of the New Zealand Maori, as well as the Hawaiians and the
island tribes of the Northwest American coast, as we have previously
described. The second type showed some Melanesian affinities, with dark
skin, flat, broad noses, thick lips, frizzy hair and shorter stature. They were
considered by the islanders to be descendants of the legendary Menehune or
Manahune. The third type had unusually fair skin, reddish or brown hair
and prominent nose, suggestive of Jewish or Arabic faces. This last type
was particularly present in the original inhabitants of New Zealand - the
Morioris, who took refuge in the Chatham Islands in this or the preceding
century, when the true Polynesian Maori arrived. It is felt that all these three
types of people dispersed through the Pacific at different times, possibly by
different routes and certainly from different cultures. (Ref. 95) A study of
skeletons from the Polynesian Islands, apparently taken from the Museum
of Natural History, and published by Sullivan in 1924 (Ref. 208) showed a
mixture of four different and distinct racial elements. Two of these were
classed as Caucasian types, one as Negroid or Melanesian and the fourth as
Negroid with added Mongoloid characteristics. Obviously very little
conclusion could be drawn from these studies, except that through the
centuries many different people have arrived on these Pacific islands.

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The Pacific: A.D. 901 to 1000

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Please see preceding module under this heading. Of some interest is the
advent of a ruling dynasty on Tonga in A.D. 950 which has lasted up to the
present time. (Ref. 175)

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The Pacific: A.D. 1001 to 1100

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In Australia the aborigines still had no settled communities, were sparsely
distributed and lived a hunting and gathering life. Although no special
information is available about this particular century, it is assumed that the
Australoid peoples of Melanesia and Micronesia continued to multiply and
spread, with a primitive culture.

The Maoris of New Zealand now had a classical Polynesian society and
their legends related to an ancestral arrival from Hawaiki (also called
"Hawai'i") and this same concept is widespread in central and southern
Polynesia. The names of various chiefs of early Hawaii are duplicated, or
nearly so, in the Maori memories. The similarities of Maori physiques and
customs to Northwest American Indian groups are amazing. They both used
a specialized elbow adze and their large, ocean going canoes were identical,
including such details as rudder, row locks, pegs in joining planks and
absence of keel. Both used sewing for adding elevated bow and stern pieces
and occasionally for adding side planks. At times the double canoe was
used by both, the paddles were similar and the method of propulsion by the
paddlers exactly the same. Both peoples used three special types of fish-
hooks and a grooved tapa or bark-beater of wood or whalebone for
manufacturing paper cloth. Neither group had knowledge of the loom until
Europeans arrived, but the women made dresses from plants or the inner
bark of trees after beating. Captain Jacobsen, who visited the American
Northwest coast in the last century, wrote: "Their articles of clothing look
almost entirely like those of the New Zealand Maori, in form as well as in
fabric and manufacturing method. The similarity is so great that some of the
blankets from the two regions, when hung up beside each other, can hardly
be distinguished."[footnote] As with the Hawaiians, the Maori houses were
also essentially the same as the Kwatiutl-Haida-Savish Indians and their
war clubs were identical. (Ref. 95) See also the next module.

As quoted by Heyerdahl (Ref. 95, page 171).

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The Pacific: A.D. 1101 to 1200

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Most of the western Pacific, including Australia, apparently remained much
as in previous centuries. On the island of Ponape, formerly called
Ascension Island, in Micronesia, there are ancient stone ruins at Nonmatol
consisting of walls of great rocks carved into log shapes. These high blocks
of basalt had been moved long distances and the work may have some
relation to that on Easter Island. Radio-carbon dating shows that the area
was occupied as recently as A.D. 1200 but the original inhabitants may
have been there centuries earlier. (Ref. 134) (Also see The Pacific: 400 to
301 B.C.)

In the eastern Pacific at Easter Island, it appears that the earliest known
platforms (Ahu) known to have been altars for classic giant statues (Moai),
were built about A.D 1110 to 1205, although statues of the same type may
have been constructed earlier.

The year A.D. 1100 begins the 580 years of the Middle Period of Easter
Island history and was initiated with a new invasion of "Short-ear" people,
who probably also came from Peru. They introduced the bird-man cult
which dominated religious activities throughout this period. In this same era
more than 600 giant statues were sculptured from the now naked crater
walls of Rano Raraku. Some of these statues reached 46 feet in height and
weighed 40 tons.

In the last chapter we discussed the probable migration of Hawaiian
Polynesians to the south Pacific. In this same vein, legend has it that in this
12th century a notable Hawaiian chief named Olopana and his wife Lu'ukia
left their islands to seek a new home in the south. With the sound changes
which distinguish the Maori variety of the Polynesian language from the
Hawaiian, these names become Koropanga and Rukutia and, as such, these
names occur in Maori legend as having come from Hawaiki. This would
tend to give further credence to the concept that Hawaii was the gateway of

the present Polynesian population of the eastern Pacific Islands. Samoa, the
western corner of Polynesia, became a contact point, acquiring certain
Melanesian assets from Fiji. The original occupants of these eastern islands
were not carpenters and did not excel in woodcarving art like the
historically known Maori-Polynesians and their northern neighbors and
probable relatives along the Northwest American coast, but were, rather,
expert stone masons like the inhabitants of the barren landscapes of the
Andes. (Ref. 95)

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The Pacific: A.D. 1201 to 1300

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Australia continued to be completely isolated from the rest of the world,
and we must simply assume that the aborigines continued to live as they
had for centuries, with little change in their way of life. In New Zealand, in
this and the next century, there was widespread deforestation by man, along
with the extinction of the large native birds, such as the Moas. Warfare
occurred with the development of fortified settlements termed pa. (Ref. 8)
Please see preceding module for information concerning other Pacific
Islands.

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The Pacific: A.D. 1301 to 1400

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Some authorities feel that it was only in this century that people from east
Polynesia came to New Zealand in their double-hulled canoes, to become
the Maoris. There is no question, however, that other people had preceded
them as old human bones along with the now extinct Moa bird skeletons
were found at that time. The exact times and relationships of the Maoris
with previous peoples may be clarified in the future. (Please see previous
modules.)

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The Pacific: A.D. 1401 to 1500

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Regarding Australia please see previous modules. It is estimated that the
true Polynesians arrived on Easter Island in the late 1400s and lived
peacefully there with their predecessors for about 200 years. The remnants
of true Polynesian culture are few today, however, indicating that the
previous South American cultures were dominant, even after the final
battles, which will be described in the 17th century chapter. With the
exception of some part of the later Easter Island vocabulary and some of the
primitive wood-cutting tools, there are no current Polynesian cultural traits
on that island. (Ref. 95) Hawaii, the Marquesas, Society Islands, New
Zealand and the other eastern Pacific islands all had active Polynesian
colonies by this century.

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The Pacific: A.D. 1501 to 1600

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Both New Zealand and Australia still remained essentially untouched since
prehistoric days. Sailing with the westward Pacific current from Mexico,
Alvaro de Saavedra reached the eastern Caroline Islands in Micronesia in
January, 1528. Subsequently the Spanish introduced cattle, goats, corn and
coffee to those small islands, but with these products went foreign diseases
of influenza, measles and perhaps others, which killed thousands of island
people. (Ref. 134)

The Spaniards had no sooner crossed the isthmus of Panama and reached
the coast of Peru by water than the Inca historians recounted that inhabited
islands were to be found some 2 months sailing distance westward in the
South Pacific and gave correct sailing directions to some of these, including
Easter Island. It was from these reports that Spanish caravels soon set out
on two separate voyages which led to the European discovery of the
Solomons in Melanesia in 1567 and the Marquesas of Polynesia in 1595.
The latter voyage has an interesting story. Alvaro de Mendana was the
Peruvian Viceroy's nephew and had been ordered by King Philip IT of Spain
to leave Callao harbor, Peru with 150 men to convert the Pacific islanders to
Christianity. The presence of the islands were known chiefly through
Sarmiento de Gamboa, who eventually was a famous chronicler of the Incas
and he had learned from them of the inhabited islands far out in the Pacific.
Among his writings is the story of a voyage of Tupac Inca, grandfather of
the Inca brother kings that the Spaniards encountered. Tupac allegedly had
sailed west with an immense number of balsa barges and 20,000 men,
returning almost a year later, with much booty and "black people". Such
balsa rafts have been found in various parts of the Pacific. The memory of
King Tupac Inca is preserved in the traditions of Mangareve Island and
even as late as 1825 a Captain Beechey visited that island and drew a
picture of 13 Mangarevans sailing a log raft 40 to 50 feet long. The balsa
rafts, like reed boats, were "wash-through" craft which could never be filled

with water. At any rate, with de Gamboa as navigator, Mendana sailed west
to land without difficulty in the Marquesas. (Ref. 95)

None of the European ships mentioned above or the ones that followed for
200 years were ever able to come back east across the Pacific the way they
had gone because of the tremendous westward running currents in the
equatorial and southern latitudes of that ocean. Those early trans-Pacific
ships usually returned to Spain through the Indian Ocean and around the tip
of Africa. Incidentally it was Zacatula, using this same westward ocean
flow, called the Saavedia current, who sailed straight across to Mindanao in
the Philippines in 1527. Braudel (Ref. 292) tells us that in 1590 a
Portuguese merchant from Macao, Joao da Gama, crossed the Pacific and
landed at Acapulco, but he says nothing about his route and we must
assume that the skipper may well have gone north along the Japanese coast
to near the Aleutians and then down the American coast. There is no other
way for any kind of early vessel. Malay canoes and proas or Chinese and
Japanese junks, whether guided or lost in drift, can be readily brought to
British Columbia on the Japanese current and if drifting on from there, in
another few weeks, will find themselves in Hawaii. (Ref. 95) It was
sometime in this or the next century that prolonged strife began on Easter
Island and some 300 finished moai (giant statues) were overturned. We
shall seek the possible meaning of this in the next module. (Ref. 176)

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The Pacific: A.D. 1601 to 1700

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Pedro Fernandes de Queireos, the Portuguese pilot who continued
command of Mendana's expedition into the far Pacific in the previous
century, set out again from Peru in 1605 with settlers to establish another
colony in the Solomons. He went too far south, passing by Tuamotu and the
Society Islands and finally set his settlers ashore in the New Hebrides in
Melanesia in 1606. A little later he, himself, mysteriously sailed away
again. (Ref. 134)

Luis Vaez de Torres sailed along the southern coast of New Guinea and
through what is now called the Torres Strait in about 1606, but thereafter
Spain made no more exploratory trips for almost 2 centuries. At the same
time, however, the Dutchman Willem Jansz, sailing out of the great base in
Java, had discovered Australia, although he thought it to be a southern
extension of New Guinea. The climax of Dutch exploration came under
Governor-General Van Dieman and his captain, Abel Janszoon Tasman
after 1636. They sailed the northwest coast of Australia, discovered and
named New Zealand (1642), found the Tonga and Fiji Islands and
discovered the south coast of Van Dieman's Island in 1644. (Ref. 8) By the
early 1640s the Dutch knew something of the west coast of Australia, which
they called New Holland, although they were not sure that it was a
continent. (Ref. 76) It has been estimated that the aborigine population of
Australia at that time was about 300,000. (Ref. 222)

Jesuit missionaries were sent to Micronesia by Mariana of Austria, Spain's
King Philip IV's widow, in 1667 and they renamed Magellan's Ladrones the
"Marianas" in the Queen's honor. Meanwhile, in the Carolines, where
Spanish sailors had first landed, disease continued to rampage and where
20,000 to 30,000 people had previously lived peacefully, by the end of this
century only a few thousand remained. (Ref. 134)

On Easter Island a catastrophe struck in 1680 and all work in the stone
quarries, along the roads and on the Ahu was suddenly stopped, never to be
resumed. Thousands of obsidian spear heads have been found and the Ahu
images were overthrown and masonry walls and old reed houses were torn
down or burned and a major population group was nearly annihilated. The
victors, who remained, were Polynesians, but they may have arrived quietly
some 200 years earlier. (Ref. 95)

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The Pacific: A.D. 1701 to 1800

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We have discussed in earlier modules the great difficulties in direct west to
east crossings of the Pacific in primitive vessels. Even in 1707 to 1711
Monsieur de Frondad, while sailing without particular difficulty from Port
Louis, France down around the tip of South America, up the west coast to
Huacho and then across the Pacific to China, then took 6 months to come
back across the Pacific to Cape St. Lucas. Ocean currents and winds are not
conducive to such trips. European voyages in the Pacific were originally
searches for a habitable, southern continent or for a usable northern strait to
the orient, both imaginary. But they did reveal an insular New Zealand and
a habitable eastern Australia, many attractive islands and a valuable shale
industry. (Ref. 8) When the Dutchmen Jacob Roggeveen stumbled on
Easter Island in 1722, there were probably 3,000 or 4,000 people on the
island, representing a mixed group with some fair-skinned and some dark-
skinned, who lit fires before some enormous statues standing in a row. The
statues, even then, were old and eroded. The people appeared to be living in
near anarchy amid the wreckage of a once high culture and cannibalism was
common. Roggeveen, however, was given great quantities of sweet
potatoes, which they called by the Peruvian name "Kumara". (Ref. 176, 95)
When the Spaniards finally arrived on that island in 1770 they found it to be
at exactly the direction and distance f rom Ecuador that had been detailed to
their earlier comrades by the Incas some two centuries before. The
Spaniards’ description of Easter Island included the presence of plantains,
chili peppers, sweet potatoes and fowls. The plants were all those known in
pre-European Peru and had been present in pre-Inca burials. Of perhaps
more importance, they found totora reeds in large bogs of old crater lakes
and from these the islanders built houses and boats, furniture, baskets, fish-
nets, etc.

These reeds also had been grown in irrigated fields on the coast of Peru and
similarly used. Easter Island tradition insists that an early ancestor,
Ure[footnote], brought with him the first totora root stocks and planted

them in Rano Kao Lake. Captain Cook also visited Easter Island in the late
1770s and the disastrous Hotu-iti war, which finally annihilated most of the
people there, must have occurred about 1772 to 1774, just before Cook's
arrival. Only a few poor islanders were left and Cook's Tahitian interpreter
could understand only a few of their words. (Ref. 95)

"Oro" is the name of an old, important tribe of the Lake Titicaca area in
Peru-Bolivia, which based its economy on the totora reeds. (Ref. 95)

In a sense, the first British Empire collapsed in 1783 when the 13 American
colonies broke free, but then the second British Empire involved the British
dominance of the South Pacific. In this 18th century Oceania belonged to
the British and the French. This began before with the voyages of William
Dampier, who had twice visited the Indian Ocean coast of New Holland
(Australia) between 1681 and 1711. Captain John Byron (grandfather of the
poet) took possession of the Falklands in 1765 and Samuel Wallis and
Philip Carteret followed with exploration of Tahiti, Pitcairn, New Britain,
Philippines, Celebes, etc.

Captain James Cook left England on the first of his three Pacific voyages in
1768, supposedly on a scientific mission at the instance of the Royal
Society. Cook circumnavigated New Zealand and came upon the eastern
shore of mainland New Holland in April, 1770 and at extreme peril spent 4
months exploring the seaboard inside the Great Barrier Reef. He called this
land "New South Wales". Almost simultaneously with Cook's first Pacific
trip, Captain Louis Antoine de Bougainville (for whom the flower is
named) took possession of the Society Islands of Polynesia for France. He
was one of the few explorers who was good to the natives, gaining their
conf idence. He introduced turkeys to the islands and may have tried to
grow wheat. De Bougainville then sailed on west to the Samoas, New
Hebrides and the Solomons. (Ref. 222) When the Europeans arrived in
Australia there were some 300,000 aborigines living in about 500 tribal
territories. One of their food delicacies was the bogang moth. On New
Zealand there were between 100,000 and 250,000 Maoris living a hunting-
farming life style. (Ref. 8) Additional Notes

Cook's second voyage starting in 1773 took him twice deep into the
Antarctic Ocean and to many new islands, including the New Hebrides,

where he first saw the Melanesians, realizing that they were much different
from the Polynesians seen on the other islands. By using citrus fruits, Cook
had prevented all scurvy on this trip. His third Pacific trip was to find the
much desired Northwest Passage to China through North America, -
seeking it from the Pacific side. It was in 1778 on that trip that he
discovered the Hawaiian Islands, where he was originally mistaken for a
white, fair-haired ancestor god, Rono (Lono), but in 1779, when they found
he was not, they killed him. In Hawaiian folklore, the blond god Lono was
associated with navigation in boats made of reeds and wickerwork.
Throughout Polynesia, Cook was deluged with sweet potatoes and he found
various gourds used as water vessels and utensils. (Ref. 95) It should be
noted that he originally named the Hawaiian group "The Sandwich Islands"
after John Montague, the 4th Earl of Sandwich. (Ref. 222) Additional Notes

In 1787 the British government decided to send a penal colony (not a
settlement colony) to Botany Bay in Australia. The exact number of
convicts sent is still in some dispute, but it approximated 700 plus, of which
about 150 were women. Actually they skipped Botany Bay and settled in
the great harbor area to be named Sydney, after a Lord of that name, and
Captain Arthur Phillip set up an autocratic government. (Ref. 76)

Note:Captain Cook's first trip was in the 106 foot bark "Endeavour". He
actually had two goals, the first being the scientific one to observe the
"transit of Venus" in 1769 so that this could be compared with two other
places of observation around the globe. Because of a cloud zone around
Venus, however, the observation was to no avail. His second goal was
given to him sealed and was opened only after completion of the first. It
was to Sail south to find "the southern continent", theorized to have to be
present by geographer Dalrymple, who felt that New Zealand was only a
northern peninsula of that hypothetical large continent. On this trip Cook
proved that New Zealand consisted of two major islands. The Maori were
initially unfriendly, but they could converse with a Tahitian accompanying
Cook. Some of the Maori canoes would hold 100 warriors. On the
Australian coast the aborigines paid little attention to the white men and
just wanted to be left alone. On a stop at Batavia many men were lost from

malaria and dysentery although they had been healthy when they arrived in
Asia. (Ref. 302)

Note:Cook's 2nd Pacific voyage (from west to east) was really another
search for the "southern continent". He used Harrison's chronometer, a
"never-failing guide". On his flagship Cook made the men keep to a strict
dietary regime and he had no scurvy, but Lt. Tobias Furneaux,
commanding a second ship, did not carry out the dietary orders and his
men developed scurvy. In 1,774 when Furneaux was awaiting Cook in
Queen Charlotte Sound, New Zealand, he sent 11 men ashore to get some
vegetables and they did not return. A rescue party found the remains of a
cannibalistic feast! It is of interest that on Cook's third voyage he left
Plymouth, England just 8 days after the signing of the Declaration of
Independence in the United States, but Ben Franklin saw to it that no U.S.
ships were to bother this scientific expedition. On Cook's return, coming
north from the tip of Africa, he stayed clear of Europe because of danger
from French ships and went up around north of Great Britain and then
down to Whitby on the east coast. Cook described Polynesian canoes 60 to
80 feet long, some even up to 100 feet and carrying 60 people with pigs,
dogs and fresh vegetables or 100 warriors. He found Polynesians almost
all over (Society Islands, Hawaii, etc.) were incorrigible thieves. His
biographer, Warner (Ref. 302) thought the Polynesians might have gone
through Micronesia on their eastward migration but certainly not
Melanesia. By 1,778 there were perhaps 300,000 Polynesians in Hawaii in
warring and feudal-like farming chiefdoms. By 1,795 all islands but Kauai
were consolidated in a single kingdom under King Kamehameha. (Ref.
309)

Forward to The Pacific: A.D. 1801 to 1900
Choose Different Region

1. Intro to Era
2. Africa
3. America

4. Central and Northern Asia
5. Europe

6. The Far East

7. The Indian Subcontinent
8. The Near East

The Pacific: A.D. 1801 to 1900

THE PACIFIC

Back to The Pacific: A.D. 1701 to 1800

AUSTRALIA

Although the first penal colonists, including 700 convicts and 324 officials
and family members had landed in Botany Bay in 1,788, the population of
Australia did not pass 50,000 until 1,830 and the 1,000,000 mark was not
reached until the late 1,850s.

As the century opened England was so busy with Napoleon that there was
little concern for Australia and it was not until about 1,820 to 1,825 that
even reasonable information was available in England about the New South
Wales colony. Overall, by mid-century 160, 800 convicts had been sent,
including many Irishmen. Few free settlers could be tempted to arrive and
by the middle 1820s there were not more than 2,000.

It was in 1,801 that Captain Mac Arthur brought 12 ewes and a ram of the
Merinos Spanish-origin sheep from South Africa, where they had been
introduced from Spain a generation before. But wool was not exported to
Britain until 1,806 and did not become a really significant market factor
until the middle 1,820s, chiefly as the result then of the prodding of
Governor Lachlan Macquarie, successor to the famous William Bligh of
"Bounty" fame. The subsequent need for new grassland resulted in the
successful crossing of the Blue Mountains and as the economy improved, a
scattering of free settlements were started around the coast. Then the inland
exploration of Australia was dominated by the problem of the rivers,
because away from them there was usually great drought. (Ref. 76, 122)

Insert Map: Some Significant Explorations of Australia, and notes.

Multiple attempts were made by the British to settle the northern tip of
Australia, chiefly to harass the Dutch in the adjacent islands and to make

contact with the Malayans and Indonesians, who had been in
communication with the Australian aborigines for centuries, but by mid-
century all colonies had failed. In the south wheat began to be of
commercial importance by 1,843, when a mechanical harvester called a
"stripper" became available. Problems of land acquisition and ownership as
well as the problem of labor supply continued for decades. Even up to 1850
free labor lived under the shadow of convict competition. At mid-century
one still spoke of the "Australian Colonies", four in number, and initial
proposals of federation got little response. In 1,863, however, the political
geography was fixed in the present day pattern, although the
Commonwealth did not materialize until 1,901. Up until then, the people
thought of themselves, not as Australians, but as Victorians or
Queenslanders, etc., as the case might be. Gold in significant quantity was
discovered in New South Wales and multiple areas of Victoria in the 1,850s,
leading to massive immigration from Europe, America and China, so that
Australia's population almost tripled from 1,850 to 1,860, reaching
1,146,000 people. Melbourne grew fiercely as the seat of government of the
gold fields of Victoria and the presence of thousands of "diggers" in those
fields resulted in a lasting nickname for any of Australia's residents. But
even then, wool-growing remained the premier industry.

Development increased in the 1,870s with a land boom in the 1,880s,
followed by a financial panic in the early 1,890s. Recovery occurred
rapidly, with associated great political, social and cultural changes.
Agriculture and especially sheep raising remained the mainstay of the
economy. Sheep diseases, the carnivorous sheep-eating dingo and the
pasture destroying kangaroos and imported rabbits were fought constantly.
In Queensland in 1,887 to 1,889 some 3,700,000 and 60,500 dingoes were
killed, but the rabbits remained uncontrolled. Wheat acreage was gradually
increased during the century, with South Australia alone reaching over 1 1/2
million acres by 1,891. Cane sugar became an important crop in
Queensland by the end of the century. Less in true importance to the
economy, but high in emotional value was mining - not only of the gold, but
also of copper, a silver-lead-zinc complex, tin and coal. The leading
manufactured products were boots, shoes and clothing.

Attempts to nationalize Australia and its various colonies surf aced at
intervals after about 1,850 and culminated in 1,891 in a constitutional
convention held in Sydney. In spite of much work, ratification by most of
the colonies did not follow and it was not until September 17, 1,900 that
Queen Victoria was finally able to sign a Proclamation to the effect that on
and after the 1st day of January, 1,901 the people of New South Wales,
Victoria, South Australia, Queensland, Tasmania and Eastern Australia
should be united in a federal commonwealth under the name of the
Commonwealth of Australia.

Australia's remoteness from the rest of the Caucasian world lessened with
the development of steam-driven ships and undersea cables. In 1,881 60%
of the shipping tonnage arriving in Australian ports was sail, but by 1,900
only 17% remained. The appearance of refrigerated ships in the 1,880s
allowed shipment of frozen meat through the tropics to the London market
and many farmers made fortunes. Urbanization progressed with Sydney
reaching a population of 487,900 in 1,901 and Melbourne attaining 494,129
in the same year. Immigration supplied over 25% of the increase in
population in the last half of the century, with people from the British Isles
leading the way. Next in number were Germans, with Italians a distant
third. In the gold rush days, however, as we noted above, thousands of
Asiatics, chiefly Chinese, entered the area. Then other, chiefly Pacific
Islanders called the "Kanakas", were deliberately imported as laborers, first
in the pastoral industries and then in sugar manufacture. The colony of
Victoria legislated restriction on Chinese entry as early as 1,855. Led by Sir
Henry Parks, Victoria, South Australia and Queensland all joined in passing
fairly uniform legislation to stem the influx. Western Australia followed in
1,886 and Tasmania in 1,887. By 1,901 the Chinese population had shrunk
to 32,000 from a high of about 50,000 in the 1,870s. Although it was agreed
in the 1,880s that Kanaka importation should also stop by 1,890, a
depression in that year changed the outlook and the restriction was not
imposed.

In 1,803 Great Britain took possession of the island of Tasmania and in the
following year established a penal colony there. At that time there were
approximately 7,000 natives, but they had been completely exterminated by
1,888. Originally part of New South Wales, Tasmania became a separate

colony in 1,825, but did not receive its present name until 1,853. (Ref. 38,
213) Additional Notes

MELANESIA
Insert Map: Micronesia, Melanesia and Polynesia

The people of the Solomon Islands are generally darker and shorter than
even those of Fiji, New Caledonia or the New Hebrides, with many of the
interior tribesmen being very black. Pygmies are present in the southern
islands. European domination of the Pacific islands did not occur rapidly.
New Caledonia, rich in minerals, became French in 1,853 and by 1,900
there were 23,500 whites in that group, by far the largest Caucasian
population in any South Seas island chain. After 1,887 New Hebrides was
controlled by a joint naval commission of British and French officers. (Ref.
76, 134)

New Guinea (Papua) is the world's largest island, excepting Greenland. It
was so named because of coastal similarity to Guinea in Africa and consists
largely of tropical jungle in which head-hunting and cannibalism have been
practiced in some remote areas perhaps right up to the current writing. The
west half of the island was annexed by the Dutch in 1,828 and in 1,884 the
British announced a protectorate over the southeast coast and adjacent
islands, while the Germans claimed the northeast portion. Thus it remained
for the remainder of the century. In Fiji, bordering Melanesia and Polynesia,
Europeans came at the opening of the century looking for sandalwood, but
their diseases almost destroyed the native Fijians, who were of Melanesian
origin. European guns intensified the tribal wars and after many chiefs
joined in a request, the British annexed the islands in 1,874. Cannibalism
flourished in those islands until the 20th century. Small, hot peppers and
other vegetables were served with human meat to give it better flavor. After
the British took over they hired natives to work in the cane fields, but at
poor wages and only a few would work. As a result the British began to
import East Indian laborers and today there are more of the latter in Fiji
than natives and that brings up many problems. (Ref. 38, 175, 134)

Since whaling vessels stayed at sea until their barrels were filled with oil,
the voyages sometimes took 2 or 3 years and only the dregs and
troublemakers of the sailing men's world could be talked into signing up for
such long voyages. As a result the Pacific islanders saw some mighty rough
and dishonest American and British sailors. They brought in rum, started
fights, stole women and anything else available. Some jumped ship to
become pirates on their own, the most famous being "Bully" Hayes, who
also was one of the originators of "blackbirding". Ship captains would
"rent" natives to entrepreneurs to be used as laborers or miners (in South
America) with the theory being that af ter a certain period the "blackbird"
would be released to return home. Few ever did. The men of Melanesia
suffered most of this blackbirding and wherever they were taken, living
condition were very bad and 10% up to 75% of them died of disease. In the
late 1,870s the people of New Caledonia rebelled against that and started to
slaughter- any foreigner, savagely. That got the attention of European
governments so that they finally forced an end to that traffic in island
people.

MICRONESIA

The Japanese, feeling population pressure, began to more south in the
Pacific, forcing the Chinese out of Okinawa and other Rykyu islands by
1,875. They had already laid claim to the Bonins in 1,861 and made them a
part of their empire in 1,876. They then soon took the three volcano islands
of which Iwo Jima is one, and after the turn of the century they moved still
further south into the true area of Micronesia. Copra and dried fish were
about the only products of these tiny islands.

POLYNESIA

In this 19th century Americans, Russians and Germans joined the Spanish,
French and English in Oceania. In the first 50 years, European attention was
given chiefly to the eastern islands, all of which, except Fiji, were already
inhabited by true Polynesian peoples. The great explorers included the

Frenchmen Dumont d'Urville (1,826-1,840), who also explored the
Antarctica, the British Captain Frederick Beechey (1,825-1,828), Captain
James Cook and above all the American Charles Wilkes, U.S.M. (1,838-
1,842). Wilkes had 5 ships at his disposal and his explorations were
extensive, from Hawaii to Antartica and the scientific publications arising
from the expeditions are voluminous. In the east Pacific as well as the west,
white men brought much grief to the islands, including disease and guns for
more deadly warfare than had previously been possible between tribes.
Dysentery and childhood diseases, along with firearms, started the process
of island depopulation. Whalers and missionaries, each in their own very
opposite ways, had tremendous effects on the island natives. (Ref. 134)

In the last module we described the visits of Captain Cook to the Hawaiian
Islands. In an effort to secure an agricultural base for Alaska, Georg
Schaeffer, a Bavarian in the Russian Service, established forts at two places
on Kuaui in 1,816, but was soon run out by Yankee traders. Later in the
century the Hawaian Islands functioned under theirown government, first as
a constitutional monarchy and then in 1,893, after the deposition of Queen
Liliuo Kalani, under a republic with Sanford B. Dole as president. In 1,900
the islands became a United States territory with Dole as governor. (Ref.
199)

The Marquesas and Tahiti reluctantly became French protectorates in 1,842.
At that time the population of the Marquesas was about 20,000, but-
European diseases decimated the people, as elsewhere in the Pacific, and
today in the 20th century there are only about 3,000 people, with 4 of the
islands having no inhabitants at all. The people of those islands used
knotted strings to help them memorize lists of their ancestors names, much
the same as the Aztecs did. (Ref. 9)

At the southwest corner of the great Polynesian triangle lies New Zealand,
the only island group lying entirely within the temperate zone. Although
discovered by Captain Cook in 1,769 it had only temporary, various
European settlements in the next half century. By 1,840 the fierce, native
Maori had already declined from a previous high population of perhaps
200,000 down to about 100,000 in the North Island, probably chiefly from
inter- tribal wars. The South Island probably never had more than 15,000.

The Maori were cannibals, but ate only their enemies, and initially, at least,
they did not consider the whites in general as enemies. Their priests used
notched sticks to help them remember endless chanted verses. They all
suffered from the white man's diseases, including venereal ones, changes in
diet and clothing and the use of guns on themselves. But they were happy to
get iron, the pig and the potato. Soon after 1,840 there were already 19
Church of England missions and 2 Catholic ones, with both trying to keep
the Maori tribes from warring on each other, although the church groups
had conflicts themselves.

The British influence on the islands actually began in 1,833 with the
appointment of James Busby as a resident agent. In 1,835 he signed the
Treaty of Waitangi with Maori chieftains, forming an infant state of mixed
whites and Maoris, under the parent protection of the King of England.
Legally this appeared to be only a statement of intent to form a biracial
society, with equal rights for both, but it survived only as an ideal. In spite
of land wars which raged from time to time, New Zealand became a Crown
Colony in 1,842, with Captain William Hobson as the first governor. A
constitution of 1,852 set up a pseudo-federal system with 6 provinces, each
with legislatures and central governments, but the Maori were denied
franchise because they were not land-owners individually, as the Europeans
were, but communally. Although not represented, they were still heavily
taxed and Hobson and his successors had great difficulties pleasing both the
Maori chieftains and the white settlers. Great government deficits
augmented the problems.

The principal promoter of systematic settlement, the New Zealand
Company, was motivated by land hunger at the expense of the "naked
savages" and the racial situation rapidly deteriorated to the Maori-
pakeha[footnote] Wars of the 1,860s. These Maori Wars, lasting from
March 1,860 to February 1,872, were not in any way a general native
uprising. They were loosely linked bush skirmishes in various parts of the
North Island. The total losses were probably not more than 700 whites and
"loyal" Maoris on one side and 2,000 Polynesians on the other side. The
wars simulated the smaller Indian wars of the eastern American forests.
They finally ran themselves down and stopped, without any formal
declaration of peace. The Maoris tried to withdraw then from the pakeha

world. The whites were then able to exploit the North Island, with a bbom
developing in the 1,879s. Maoris were employed as laborers on public
works and as shearers and station hands. In 1,867 some natives got the vote
and elected 4 members to the House of Representatives.

"Pakeha" was the Maori word for "white settlers".

Running parallel with the wars during the 1,860s was the story of gold on
the South Island, beyond the reaches of the battles. Thus, both population
and economy rose faster on the South Island, due not only to gold, but also
to vast increases in cattle, sheep and crop acreage. Full exploitation of the
potential products of both islands was delayed because of the absence of
technology such as refrigeration, however, and a depression developed in
the 1880s. Along with this, but unrelated, by the middle 1,880s it appeared
that the Maoris might die out, as their number rapidly declined. By 1,896
there were only 42,000 left. New Zealand reached political stability under
the leadership of a liberal prime minister, Richard John Seddon (1,893-
1,906) and the help of rising prices and the export of meat, cheese and
butter facilitated by refrigerated shipping. The British initially offered a
market for wool and gold. Many experiments in socialism were undertaken
in this country and it remains basically socialistic, yet without complete
government control, today. (Ref. 76, 8, 9)

It was noted previously that when the Maoris arrived in New Zealand they
found a previous people, the Morioris[footnote], which they drove out to
the Chatham Islands, some 400 miles away. In the 1,830s some Maoris
apparently followed them there and largely exterminated them, with the
help of a disreputable white. These Chatham Islands served as a place of
confinement of Te Kooti and other Maori rebels during the wars of the
1,860s and were later incorporated into the pastoral economy of New
Zealand.

Grattan (Ref. 76) describes the Morioris as "Polynesians", but this may be
incorrect. Please see The Pacific: A.D. 801 to 900.

At the risk of overemphasizing the importance of one small island, further
information on the far southeastern Polynesian Easter Island may be of
some interest. To date we have noted:

1. Probable original settlement by people from the South American
mainland

2. Late arrival of true Polynesians

3. The loss of Polynesian culture, in the main, in favor of the earlier
traditions

Between 1,859 and 1,862 Peruvian slavers took some 1,000 Eastern
islanders to Peru to dig guano. A handful of those later returned to the
island, but brought small-pox with them and that disease further decimated
the already depleted island. By 1,877 there were only 111 natives left. (Ref.
176)

In 1,862 a French missionary, F. Eugene Eyraud, visited Easter Island and
found some strange boards and sticks with carved symbols in some of the
huts and the local people had no idea of their meaning or significance.
Some were salvaged and eventually ended up in various museums across
the world. In 1,958 Thomas Barthel (Ref. 9) got reproductions of those
from Honolulu, Vienna, Santiago de Chile, Leningrad, Washington D.C.
and London, finally accumulating some 12,000 signs or ideograms to
analyze. The signs were 1/3 to 1/2 inches long and were elegantly made.
Previously a French bishop had found a man on Tahiti, who allegedly was
originally an Easter islander and he had "read" four of the tablets containing
the signs, by chanting a song in Polynesian for each. The chants were
recorded by the bishop, but translated into French they seemed meaningless
and the notes were almost lost. Barthel decided that the Tahitian, Metoro
Tauara, was too uneducated to have completely translated the ancient script
and proceeded to develop a translation of his own. He reported that 120
basic elements were combined to make 1,000 compound signs as ideograms
and that it was not a phonetic system. Furthermore, he decided that the
writing was chiefly religious ritual, without mention of historical events. He
says that the islanders had another writing called the "Kau Script" which
recorded their annals, but that has disappeared. Since the board writings had
a special symbol for the breadfruit tree and other plants which never grew
on Easter Island and since Pitcairn Island to the west was mentioned,
Barthel felt that these things refuted Heyerdahl's theory of settlement from
the eastern mainland. But those talking boards are not dated and whereas
Heyerdahl's South American migrations theoretically occurred many

centuries ago, it does not seem that Barthel's conclusions are necessarily
valid. Ocean trips between Polynesian islands certainly occurred after the
time of the early Polynesian migrations, if not before and such have no
bearing on very early trips west from Peru or Ecuador. (Ref. 9)

Please permit one more argument from Heyerdahl. (Ref. 95) In 1,864 before
the local language had been recorded, a missionary with a group of
Mangarevans came to Easter Island via Tahiti and the Tahitian language
was introduced, so that subsequently there was a mixture of languages, if
there had not been before. The Tahitians who arrived at that time were
Christians and therefore did not bring the classical Polynesian deities of Tu,
Tane, Tangaroa, Tiki and Maui. Some of those names persisted although
they were not worshiped or venerated. The Easter Island gods were
Makemake and Haua and symbols related to the former were closely
associated with sun-measuring devices and other trappings of solar worship,
all unknown in other Polynesian areas. Conversely, the complex bird cult
and ritual of Easter Island has no counterpart in the rest of Polynesia, but
the bird-man cult was present at Tiahuanaco, Bolivia and in the Chimu
culture of north Peru, so that an American origin for those Easter Island
practices is suggested.

Note:In Tasmania the first Europeans (except a few shipwrecked sailors)
were prisoners transported there in 1821. They worked under the lash,
cutting 2,000 year-old Huon pines for ship building. In the 1850s whalers
came to Port Davey. The whites raped the aboriginal women and stole their
children. Their men were relentlessly tracked down and killed for sport in
parties like fox-hunters. The last pure-blood aboriginal died in 1876. (Ref.
312)

Choose Different Region

1. Intro to Era
2. Africa
3. America

4. Central and Northern Asia
9. Europe

6. The Far East

7. The Indian Subcontinent
8. The Near East

Special Sections

Note:The following are "Special Sections" that complete the full collection
of the World History textbook. They each provide complimentary
information to multiple eras and regions. They are listed as follows for
easier navigation.

Chart of Geological Ages

Archaeological Dating ‘Techniques
Development of Indo-European Languages
Territories of the Roman Empire in A.D. 117

Factors in the Overthrow of the Barbarian Empires
Overseas Scandinavian Centers

1. 9th Century

2. 10th Century
3. Lith Century
4, 12th Century
5. 18th Century

Causes of the Crusades
Results of the Crusades
Geneology_of the Conquering Mongol Khans

Medicine in the 13th Century

Summary_of Science and Philosophy in the 14th and 15th Centuries

Factors Paving the Way for Reformation

The Thirty Years War

The Great Northern War. Part 1

The Great Northern War. Part 2

Factors Leading to the American Revolution

Features of the American Revolution

Summary of the Advance of Knowledge in the 18th Century

Thought on the Economics of the 18th Century_and the Immediately
Preceding Centuries

The War of 1812

Abraham Lincoln and the War Between the States
The Immediate Effects of the Civil War

The Reconstruction Period, 1865-1877

The Spanish-American War

The Indian Problem in the Last Half of 19th Century

Bibliography

BIBLIOGRAPHY

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